Review

"Middle Friendship Star", Relief Print Montage with Hand Stitching.

Rachel Epp Buller
Expanded Identities

10 a.m.-4 p.m. (call for appointment)

INKubator Press
115 W. 18th Street
Kansas City, MO
816.471.2629

Hours: Variable, depending on events and workshops.
Runs through: Jan. 31

Gallery site: http://artsincubatorkc.org/inkubator-press

It's easy for individuality to get lost in a family setting. Others define us by our relations: "You're Charlie's boy," or "You're Ben's mom," or "You're Kristina's sister."

That's especially true of mothers in conservative religious environments, who are expected to be submissive to their husbands, devoted to their children, and both to God... sometimes at the cost of their own identities.

Rachel Epp Buller, who describes  herself as a feminist-art historian-printmaker-mama of three whose recent art and scholarship examine this balancing act, incorporates a base-level symbol of individuality into Expanded Identities, her show this month at the Arts Incubator's INKubator Press.

Buller, assistant professor of art at Bethel College in central Kansas, explains:

"The Identity Series" marks the changes, overlaps, and transformations of identity that occur in the life of the family. Initially conceived as a grouping of representational portraits, the series later morphed into an abstracted idea of portraiture, taking as its formal basis one fingerprint of each member of our family. Printed individually, the fingerprints highlight unique genetic qualities; when layered, they can speak to the temporary masking of identity that occurs in the position of motherhood. In hand-stitched print blankets, issues of genetic difference overlap, literally and metaphorically, with larger implications of family position—individuality alongside and within familial identity. The most recent print “quilts” combine the fingerprints with fragments of the representational portraits, further playing on issues of identity and likeness. These visual memoirs of motherhood use traditional patchwork quilting patterns to draw on a lengthy history of women’s artistic creativity and on my own Mennonite cultural heritage.

That's a significant cultural and philosophical statement ... and Buller underscores it with art that more than stands on its own merits.

Middle Friendship Star, today's featured piece, is a prime example. The fingerprint patterns are not readily apparent; instead, they give the work a floral quality (which, of course, one is conditioned to expect in a quilt).

In a more than metaphorical sense, then, the whorls and loops and ridges that make people individually identifiable have given up their own identities for the sake of the larger whole.

It's a sacrifice as visually engaging as it is thought-provoking.

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