Lorie Hamermesh at Gallery NAGA - Brief Article

In her recent work, Boston-based painter Lorie Hamermesh has enriched her layered imagery with printed, painted and sometimes embroidered translucent silk. The resulting constructions are like shallow shadow boxes, their unabashed femininity, delicacy and fine detailing appropriate for the nostalgic, often autobiographical subject matter. Yet for all her references to the past, Hamermesh makes good use of the latest technology, employing an Iris ink-jet printer to transfer to the fabric old snapshots of floral still lifes, dogs, babies and a prom couple (which a catalogue essay identifies as the artist and her date, ca. 1964). Recurring appropriated images, like the swooning female nude from Cabanel's famous Birth of Venus (1863), are also mixed in via ink jet.

That nude reclines in a foaming sea made frothy, in part, with real pieces of eyelet embroidery and lace in the small, sweetly erotic The Demon of Desire (2000; at 23 1/2 inches square, its size was typical of most of the 15 works, all from 1999 and 2000, on view). The figure is menaced by a wolflike black dog, its red tongue hanging out; traces of other shadowy figures and landscapes compound the pictorial complexity.

In Veiled Desire, one of the largest works at 50 by 50 inches, the sensuous Venus floats horizontally behind the prim-looking prom couple. Her lower torso can be discerned behind the skirt of the girl's fancy white dress, suggesting repressed sexuality. The work is enriched by lavish details: the dress has been appliqued onto the figure as a cutout of real beaded silk, and the skirt itself is further appliqued with a tiny floral design. Other elements here call up faded romance and distant identities: a row of progressively withered roses crosses the top of the work and is echoed by a row of shadowy negative and positive figures of little girls across the bottom. Both bands appear within a subtle painted grid interspersed among the silken layers. The grid, an ordering device that calls up quilts, photo albums or scrapbooks, does not overwhelm the illusion of vast space created by a horizon line and starry skies.

Add to this a loose, flowing pattern of arabesques and vines, rendered in paint and other mediums. Except for the white prom dress, there is no central image in this overall design. The success of all Hamermesh's new works resides in their complex evocation of wistful dreams and elusive memories.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group