I emerged from the gray elevator into the glowing room of sequential colorations. The center of the light was the Queen Directory, busy guiding the missed intersections. But I knew it wasn’t time for her yet. I needed to find my navigator. My navigator got lost in the lights, and he couldn’t talk to me because every time he did, the words took awkward angles and lost their relevance. The aggressor came through unseen space, but before she could wrap her surrender around me, I was joined by an exclamation point masquerading as a question mark. What I knew was that it is the inside that is important. It is the unseen space that has to see the starlight. And that’s what Kokee is for.
Kauai artist Sally French creates allegories that parallel the themes occurring in her life. As a dream incorporates symbolism with elusive meaning open to wide interpretation, French’s work creates a view of life that is multi-dimensional. I’m not sure I understand it, but I am sure that that isn’t important, because Sally French told me that she wouldn’t want to be didactic when I asked her how much of her photographic depiction of quasi-guerilla theater acts was intended to be whimsical. I gather that whimsy is essential. French’s artist statement is hidden from your first glance, but when you do get to it, it begins, “Wundurlust: The Keeper’s Tale is a visual narrative, a loosely woven, tongue-in-cheek fairy tale that attempts to understand our troubled times by glimpsing a parallel wonderland and those who inhabit it.”
French is depicting a waking dream that is a multi-layered metaphor for what is happening on intra-, inter-, and socio-personal levels in French’s life… and insofar as we are inproximity to her on these levels, she is also depicting what is happening in our own lives. If concrete meaning existed in Wunderland, it would be a black whole that sucked the creactivity out of the hersonalities of Wunderland’s mopulation.
When we dream, the symbols are symbols whether or not our waking selves know what they mean. So too, the symbols in French’s series of photos seem to exist without any permanent bonds to meaning. While there is a narrative - a distinct beginning and a definite end - the story that French tells does not necessitate a sense of time… only relevance. What the relevance of a giant blue egg, 7 female keepers, a tyrant doctor wearing an apron with breasts and a schlong, and 1 Inky Whang riding a chopper is mostly up to you and what you bring to the story.
Looking through the galleries at www.Sallyfrench.com, I am truly amazed at French’s skill in drawing, painting, and composition. French told me at the opening that she wanted to take her hand out of the work, and that’s why she chose photography as the medium. These aren’t master-crafted photographs. Ansel Adams is not going to topple off his throne of Most-Loved Photographer Ever. But French does give us the sense that we could have been at these locations. These are photo’s that we might have shot with our friendly little digital camera (we couldn’t have blown them up this big, but that’s beside the point). Wunderlust is a metaphorical narrative of life, and it isn’t complete without the firm impression of your mind’s teeth into it’s juicy symbolism.
You can check out Wunderlust at the Koa Gallery (www.koagallery.kcc.hawaii.edu) at Kapi’olani Community College from now until Valentines Day.
