Review

"Mothers of Daughters," Mixed Media on Paper.

Kendra Marable
What Remains to be Seen

Noon-6 p.m.

Wonder Fair Art Gallery & How!
803 Massachusetts
Lawrence, KS
406.360.5875

Hours: Noon-9 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, Noon-6 p.m. Sunday
Runs through: Feb. 13

Artist’s site: http://www.kendramarable.com
Gallery site: http://www.wonderfair.com

Any art, to be truly effective, must have both public and private components: inner meaning, and resonance with others' perceptions.

Lose the outward connection, and that way lies either alienation or self-indulgence. Create from a false or non-existent inner space, and you make soulless work.

Kendra Marable's art is the result of intense inward focus ... but not at the expense of its relationships with the outside world.

I aspire to keep searching out new ways to shape and challenge my artistic convictions as I pay attention to what sustains creativity, imagination, intimacy, community, and ultimately life, Marable writes. The process of making art is evidence of participating and responding to my inner and outer worlds. It is a preservation of the lost and found. As I sift through the evidence of life around me, I gather up a mixed media carnival, a crumpled bag of souvenirs that chart my own adventures and process of being. To glean from the world in this way tells me where I have been. By collecting the experience of the search and the objects as material evidence, I become both the collector and the collection.

What Remains to be Seen, Marable's solo show at Lawrence's Wonder Fair Art Gallery & How!, contains images that are familiar without being trite and elusive without being inaccessible. It's an impressive balancing act: Intellect on one side, emotion on the other, with just enough uncertainty — Is she going to fall to one side, and if so ... which one? — to keep viewers riveted.

I want to remind myself and others of the importance of looking and listening beneath the surface, to pay attention to intuition and perception in order to experience truth, Marable writes. It is vital to be aware and open to all the details that surround us everyday. Look and listen closely.

The mixed-media Mothers of Daughters, pictured above, rewards close inspection with the eyes in one's head and the eyes of the heart. It's loaded with nostalgic appeal, even though the women in the vintage photographs are people viewers will never know.

Part of that stems from the pictures themselves. It's human nature to look for resemblances in the faces of strangers. The other half of the work's emotional attraction comes from Marable's use of bonding symbols — hearts, shared cups of tea, party items — to forge a sense of closeness, conviviality and celebration.

Drawing allows me to create two dimensional fictional allegories, Marable explains. I make detailed pencil drawings of various objects and fragments of nature on top of turn-of-the-century cabinet photographs. The individual drawings connect and combine in order to give identity to otherwise anonymous portraits.

Old photographs carry hints and traces from past lives and other realms within them. The process of allowing the portrait to speak to me and guide the drawing is very intuitive. I invent a loose narrative based on the idea that our belongings are the visual reference points we use to preserve stories and identity.

Those belongings, then, remain to be seen by future generations. The photographs remain to be seen by whoever will look. And Marable's art remains at Wonder Fair into mid-February ... to be seen both as lens and mirror, providing a look into our own minds as well as hers.

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