This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, May 24, 2010 - “Slinger 3” at Boots Contemporary Art Space is a good way to catch up on what local artists are doing, and to get introduced to some hometown talent you might not have known about.
The exhibition includes ex-pat Larry Krone, plus Sandra Marchewa, Karin Hodgin Jones, Rj Messineo, Josh Meyer, and David Johnson.
Jones fills the front gallery with her mechanical string-and-motor contraptions that pull taught fabric expanses into peaks; they’re a little painful, as they can’t help evoking sutured skin. This is a nice follow-up to Jones’ larger recent show at Good Citizen.
Johnson has a grid of glossy photos of architectural details, many of them so slick and geometric they could pass for hard-edge paintings.
Marchewa is represented by an assemblage of cigarette lighters bearing portraits, presumably of smokers who have met an untimely end (the familiar “BIC” logo on the lighters is replaced with “RIP”).
Larry Krone covers an entire wall with red, white, blue and mylar stripes as a backdrop for an array of crocheted doilies and potholders. It’s hoosier-licious, all-American kitsch, with the sad-sack craft overtones of Mike Kelley’s work in the '90s.
Ivy Cooper, a professor of art at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is the Beacon's art critic.