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.
