Past Exhibitions ...

Detour
March 15-30, 2002

February 2002:
a.a. rucci
Belli Burli makes a Rudj

Medicophilia: a multi-media group exhibition
January 2002
Curated by Catherine L. Thompson
Andrew Kaufman. "Homunculus V." Blood, Urine, and Fingerprints. 48" x 5"

Adrienne Golub, Weekly Planet
On the outside Looking Inward

Wandering through the gallery, I'm struck by a pervasive exquisite beauty edged by a subtle odor. It nearly takes my breath away. Not only physically, but emotionally and aesthetically.

These were my impressions while I viewed Covivant Gallery's holiday offering, Crazy Christmas Candy, the mixed-media exhibition of St. Petersburg artist Candy Shippnick Garrett, curated by local artist Catherine L. Thompson. Awarded an MFA from the University of South Florida in 1994, Garrett lives with debilitating mental illness, an emotional state that informs and enriches sculptural assemblages that are paradoxically personal and universal.

On subsequent visits it was a world I entered with the artist, an articulate, sensitive woman given to deconstructing her complex family history by creating phenomenal albeit angst-filled art objects. Mesmerizing objects noted for an eerie beauty struggling beneath layers of decaying debris.

To the extent that Garrett's work can be categorized, it falls very loosely into Outsider Art, a spin-off from the less psychologically-driven folk art, and art brut, a term coined during the 1940s by French painter Jean Dubuffet, who was describing art created by residents of a Swiss insane asylum. Whatever the designation, the art is traditionally made by self-trained individuals who reject external cultural taboos. The highly trained Garrett has exhibited at Sarasota's Mira Mar Gallery and was selected by sculptor Richard Beckman for the USF Faculty Alumni Exhibition 2000. Though educated, she shares the Outsider Artist's characteristic of converting self into self-expression marked by unflagging honesty.

At my request, Covivant extended Garrett's exhibition, sans her fool-the-eye-plastic chocolate Santas and augmented by several new pieces. "Was it simply in her mind, this apprehension ... or did these demons truly exist?" Much like artist Hollis Sigler's signature self-revelatory statements, Garrett's poetic stream-of-consciousness titles are remarkable entrees to childhood years in the environs of Tampa's Forest Hills Country Club. Personal anecdotes mingle with fragmented memories of the club's "snack bar that smelled of urine, thin girls taking ballet," and after 1960's Hurricane Donna, "horseback riding on the golf course at 2 a.m. when the pond rose up to (her) house."

Though Garrett explains that reliving the past is "more for edification of an art work," exorcising painful memories led to collecting and hoarding particular found objects. Feathers. Dolls. Matted and disheveled hair. Gloves. Stuffed toy animals. Tiny chairs and antique doll buggies. Some, like dead birds and other creatures, are not for squeamish souls, though for the naturalist Garrett, who once possessed a license to pick up road kill, they are precious extensions of life.

USF Fine Arts Advisor, Richard Olinger, suggests that her birds inhabit "a nightmarish nightscape that seems to be a cross between Kafka and the Addams Family attic."

Standouts include a small grandfather clock with every millimeter of space packed with personal biography -- minutiae like tiny family photo portraits circling the clock face. At floor level, a child's chair becomes a miniature stage where menacing male dolls trap a cowering female. And in a trend-defying coup, Garrett expresses the current fashion-is-art statement with gorgeous wide-brimmed, flowered, feathered hats. Some are sweetly romantic, giving "women a sense of empowerment and confidence." Others pick up compelling visual vibrations from the other art, thus edged with a subversively welcome dark side.

At Covivant's "The Orange Blossom Queen and Other Visions of Florida Madness." Look for Mandy Greer's "Imagined Exotic," Karen Peters' "Auntie Em, Where Am I?" and Michael Peters' "Tourist Trap."

* 4.19.01
Viva Covivant.

Covivant's two current exhibitions again raise expectations for this alternative gallery's continuing transformation into a more sophisticated venue. Menagerie, a theme that could have turned out too cute, instead presents a fascinating anthropomorphized look at human foibles through a variety of animal forms. Among a number of standouts: curator Margaret Meehan's ceramic frogs and Mandy Greer's mixed-media installation. The University of South Florida annual photography exhibition, Luxuriance As They Stray, well-juried by gallery owners/directors Carrie Mackin and Chantel Foretich, includes Sunni Barbera's fine ectacolor and Kate Spencer's beautiful, hanging photo cubes.

Entertaining repairs, new eats and some unusual art

By ERNEST HOOPER
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 9, 2001

I never thought someone could cull art from the subject of menstruation.

Yet Sarah Loveland and Melissa Roll have done just that with their new exhibit at the Covivant Gallery and Studios (4906 N Hillsborough) in Seminole Heights. The two-room collection focuses on the double-entendres in the advertising of feminine hygiene products and presents the internal conflict of adolescent girls on the subject of menstruation.

And Loveland and Roll have crafted their work through experience, having graduated from Blake High's magnet art program last spring. To have an exhibit at such a young age is impressive.

Maybe there is hope for today's youth.