When I Die (2000) by John B. Chewning features a sign with the words ‘WHEN I DIE BURY ME IN THE WOODS SO MY HUSBAND WILL HUNT FOR ME.’ It rests on a peculiar conic wrapping of vines, with a roughly painted American flag in the background. In the exhibition we read some text below the work that explains that the building in the background is a gift shop, since lost to fire, in a city known for hosting not only the first dental college (so the artist claims) but also the Seip Mound, an ancient Hopwell earthwork site. The photo that was at first quirky invites us as per its sign to an investigation of the buried; it is symbolic of the kind of inner response one has to Chewning’s work - both celebratory and wistful for a vanishing world, more particularly a vanishing America - and also to the contributions of the artists Paula Wiggins, Lynda Riddle and Ellie Fabe in the exhibition ‘The Artist as Diarist’ at the Sandra Small Gallery, curated by Daniel Brown.Notable also are the smallest of the works of Wiggins, Fabe’s watercolors without the invasive collage materials and Riddle’s paintings of exterior scenes.
-A.C. Frabetti
'The Artist as Diarist,' curated by Daniel Brown, featuring the work of John Chewning, Ellie Fabe, Linda Riddle and Paula Wiggins. The Sandra Small Gallery, 124 Pike St., Covington, KY. June 12-July 10. (Full Disclosure: Daniel Brown is a contributor for AEQAI.)
In photo: Chewning, John B. 'When I Die,' 2000. Photograph. Courtesy of the Sandra Small Gallery.
