Review

"Sameville," Acrylic on Plexigas.

Lorrie Boydston

11 am.-9 p.m.

Eden Alley Cafe
707 W. 47th
Kansas City, MO
816.561.5415

Hours: 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday

Artist's site: http://www.lorrieboydston.com
Gallery site: http://www.edenalley.com

It's hard to see Lorrie Boydston's artwork without hearing Rush's "Subdivisions" in my mind's ear. (That's not a bad thing. I like the song.) The world she depicts is carefully arranged -- and at the same time, full of tiny rebellions.

Full disclosure, up front: I tell people I'm from Kansas City, even though I live in the suburbs. Specifically, I live in Mission, an older inner-ring suburb. I like it here -- and by "here," I mean the River Market, Union Hill and the Plaza as well as my own neighborhood.

On the other hand, some stereotypes grow from kernels of truth -- and the truth is that the farther you get from the city center, the more alike things look.  In some parts of town, saying, "I live in a beige house on a cul-de-sac," should be followed by the disclaimer, "and so does everyone else in a twelve-block radius." Whenever people speak of the suburbs, the phrase "cookie-cutter sameness" is fairly sure to pop up.

There's something funny about cookies, though: They're the same only when they come out of the oven. If you've ever been to a cookie-decorating party at an elementary school, you'll know what I mean. Some of those icing/sprinkles/little silver ball combinations should be hanging on a gallery wall.

The human need for an individual identity will come out, even in the most conformist environment. Ask any  parochial school principal trying to enforce a uniform code. In Boydston's paintings, it manifests more quietly.

On a street where all the houses are white, a string of bright balloons leads the way to a garage sale. A mailbox hangs from a crooked post. They're small things -- but only on the surface.

That mailbox doesn't merely represent an overdue repair project. It's a threat not to order but to orderliness. The longer that mailbox stays off-kilter, the greater the likelihood of a strongly worded letter from the homeowners association or the city's code enforcement officer.

That garage sale? To some, it's a gilt-edged invitation to invasion.  That attitude, while not as prevalent as it was fifty years ago -- when school desegregation fueled white flight to the suburbs -- is still around. It wasn't so long ago that one suburban parks and recreation department planted bushes across the halfcourt lines of basketball courts in three public parks. Apparently, having a place to play a full-court game attracts the "wrong element."

Boydston, who also has works on display at Primary Colors Gallery in Independence, chose her media well. She's a skilled painter, but even the best painting of a house on a corner lot is still a painting of a house on a corner lot. Her acrylic-on-Plexiglas technique provides a How did she do that? hook. Once you've taken the bait and started seeing, the small revelations -- outer and inner, stylistic and philosophical -- can begin.

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