When I was a kid my grandma used to have a turn of phrase that I still love and use often: “God doesn’t give with both hands.” More often than not she would use this to describe pretty peo­ple who weren’t very bright, mut­tered con­spir­a­to­ri­ally under her breath with a teas­ing elbow to the ribs. Despite my decid­edly agnos­tic nature I love this lit­tle col­lo­qui­al­ism and find myself repeat­ing it often. “He’s really nice, but he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor,” my friend tells me. God doesn’t give with both hands. “I love being back in school, but I don’t have enough free time!” God doesn’t give with both hands. “This bur­rito is fill­ing, but not very deli­cious…” God doesn’t give with both hands. And then on rare occa­sions, this sim­ply isn’t true. He’s a great dancer and he vol­un­teers at a soup kitchen on the week­ends. This bur­rito is deli­cious and fill­ing. The art­work of Ali­cia Escott is a per­fect exam­ple of both hands giv­ing gen­er­ously. Too often artists sac­ri­fice tech­nique in the pur­suit of high con­cept, or vice versa. Escott’s work is smart and markedly orig­i­nal on a con­cep­tual level and exquis­itely exe­cuted with mas­ter­ful technique.

Escott is a San Fran­cisco based artist, cura­tor and envi­ron­men­tal activist. She did her under­grad at the School of the Art Insti­tute in Chicago and earned her MFA at Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts. Her work focuses on a recur­rent theme of loss, on a per­sonal level as well as a soci­etal level. Much of the loss that Escott deals with is eco­log­i­cal: endan­gered species, loss of habi­tat, and lost bat­tles against the ever encroach­ing threat of envi­ron­men­tal dev­as­ta­tion. She uses beau­ti­fully ren­dered paint­ings and draw­ings to com­mu­ni­cate a sense of urgency about the state of the planet. Her work is intel­li­gent, touch­ing and at times deeply humor­ous, with­out try­ing too hard. Take for exam­ple the draw­ings she did using National Geo­graphic arti­cles about con­ser­va­tion from the 70s and 80s as source mate­r­ial. Escott redrew imagery from the texts tromploi el on biodegrad­able plas­tic bags to sig­nify the lack of progress made in con­ser­va­tion in the past few decades. Like the efforts and ideals of past envi­ron­men­tal­ists, whose attempts at eco­log­i­cal redemp­tion have sadly been eroded by the swelling tide of con­sumerism and short term think­ing, these draw­ings will quickly disintegrate.

I was for­tu­nate enough to stum­ble on Alicia’s work at her show at Portland’s SEA Change Gallery, which is a must see gallery for me on First Thurs­days. Last month the gallery hosted her exhibit Last night, again, you were in my dreams.… a col­lec­tion of con­cep­tual paint­ings and instal­la­tions. In the series Escott painted ani­mals on plas­tic sheet­ing, which she installed in the gallery filled with life­like vol­ume, and often accom­pa­nied by pho­tographs of the painted ani­mals in their “nat­ural envi­ron­ment.” Though the work was obvi­ously meant to be both crit­i­cal and con­sci­en­tious, the absur­dity of it often caused me to laugh out loud, an ele­ment of lev­ity that served the work well, as it was over­all quite sad to see the majes­tic ani­mals jux­ta­posed with quotes about species loss. One of my favorite pieces was a highly detailed paint­ing of a pel­i­can done on a Barney’s New York bag. The title of the piece sums it up quite well: Draw­ing of a Cal­i­for­nia Brown Pel­i­can on a Bar­neys plas­tic gar­ment bag. The Cal­i­for­nia Brown Pel­i­cans cur­rently being con­sid­ered for removal from the Endan­gered Species Act after thirty years of pro­tec­tion allowed pop­u­la­tions to rebound. This is a doc­u­men­ta­tion of the drawn bird’s rein­tro­duc­tion into its nat­ural habi­tat after hav­ing achieved cou­ture sta­tus via Bar­neys New York.

Ali­cia Escott is cer­tainly one to watch. An almost implau­si­ble blend of intel­li­gence, wit, vision and can­dor, her tal­ent and ded­i­ca­tion to her prac­tice only seem to be grow­ing. In a recent under­tak­ing, while liv­ing at an artist res­i­dency where leak­age caused her win­dows to be cov­ered in plas­tic, Escott endeav­ored to paint the plas­tic sheet­ing with a com­po­si­tion of what the view would look like from the nearby Bishop Pine Pre­serve if the house were not there. With envi­able paint­ing tech­nique, and an expan­sive, for­ward think­ing imag­i­na­tion, Ali­cia Escott is a tal­ent on the rise.

Tags: Alicia Escott, burrito, colloquialism, muttered, phrase, SEA Chane Gallery, volunteers

« “Art For Hearts.” Benefit Auction in NYC.

EASEL Art Fair. »

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Art, Event, installation, Painting, Rising Artists, Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.