Rumpus: Wishful Thinking, Civil Discourse features the work of the Oiseaux Sisters (Carolyn Fellman and Susan Andrews) and Jane Dennis, including their "colorful responses" to questions around politics, culture, the environment, and human interaction.
The Oiseaux (French for birds) Sisters migrate seasonally from their Cayuga County, New York studios to Gulfport, Florida with periodic detours abroad to Mexico, Europe and Asia. Their deliberately low tech, mixed media objects have been shown for decades in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Contemporary Craft Show. Known for its humor and metaphor, their work is part toy shop, part stage set, part library, and part school.
Jane Dennis, who resides in Ithaca, NY, creates sculpture from a variety of materials, including wood, metal, paper, fabric, and acrylic paint, as well as recycled elements that add an element of uncertainty to the process. "The artist can't be in complete control," she says, "and used materials can create a new direction or refuse to budge."
Together in this exhibition they ask: How to be a visual artist in this time of upheaval and change? "Engage," the artists encourage. "Change comes. We are all agents of change. Look to your borrowed feathers. Locate those purloined gloves. Stop, look, listen and love anyway. Savor, salvage, spot the switcheroo. Let the rumpus begin!"
