Last Wednesday we went on a road trip, post-Eraserhead, to see the works of Amy Culter: large drawings, prints, and paintings. Her all-women cast of characters and animals, who become interconnected, commingled, and uncomfortably interdependent are the threads Cutler uses to weave strange yarns about the domestic, the everyday, and states of being. Her meticulous rendering is undone when one comes close and the viewer is seduced by sparkly paint, doll-like shoes only an artist might wear, and strands of hair and patches of exquisitely patterned cloth, Durer-like grass and strings to nowhere and everywhere. Invented moments in a life that straddle pairings of Renaissance, instructional diagrams, fairy tales, and Sur-realsim to reveal her affinities, fears, and what is truly valuable, meaning from whatever is experienced.
Cutler's gatherings of people and animals, everyday objects and spaces unfold longings, loss, loathing, and love. Relations of one thing to another, one animal to one person, or a group to a group, becomes a way to calculate and measure our capability and our failure. Her sense of a simultaneous vastness and limitedness seem to rub and irritate. Her figures are like dolls she clothes and holds on the page. Are they static or moving still. Grimaces, frowns, and scowls seem like old lace, or folds of cloth. They tell other stories of lives lived and disclose nothing more than a face.
Cutler's colors are quiet at times,
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