Mandy Greer’s Dare alla Luce at Museum of Contemporary Craft

It is highly unlikely that if I were to consider a painting, that I would spend time thinking about the Gamblin employee who ground the pigment and mixed the paints used in the painting, let alone where the minerals came from or who operates the machine that fills the paint tubes. I’d skip all of that and get right to what was done with that paint on the canvas. (Never mind who operated the canvas weaving loom.)

It’s a traditional conditioning of the art-viewer that she focus in on the content (initially subject, later subject + idea), and perhaps the skill employed in rendering the content rather than the material and means. But even in an art historical moment in which legions of artists have addressed material directly (what does this material want to do?) or process directly (the means being the end), we have kind of circled back via a painting resurgence to looking at paintings and are not thinking about the paint but the content, making paint largely invisible to many once more.

Such is absolutely not possible in the case of Mandy Greer’s “Dare alla Luce,” currently at the Museum of Contemporary Craft (724 NW Davis). This epic installation that occupies the entire first floor gallery is created not of paint but of miles, perhaps, of elaborately crocheted, braided, knotted yarn and shredded fabric dotted with cheap plastic pony beads, “crystals,” and buttons that cascades, drapes, and drips in streams and clusters dotted with pillow-like leaves and pods from massive crochet-encrusted chandeliers suspended overhead and from the mouth of a massive black bird.

There is nothing conceptual here about the material in that the work doesn’t refer to its use of crochet, for example. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Greer is not addressing “women’s work.” No, here crochet is used as a means of generation of material for the artist, and much of it created in factory-like crochet-a-thons at which volunteer workers create the material for the Greer’s installations. Because we’ve all likely crocheted or braided or tied knots in string at some point, we have intimate knowledge of the time required to generated the yards of crochet required to created this installation, unlike paint where most of us have never mixed our own. The familiarity of the material and means, particularly to a generation of DIYers who’ve re-embraced knit/crochet etc. with a vengeance, informs our relationship with the piece in multiple ways.

This intimacy of the material is central to Greer who returned to fiber after taking an MFA in ceramics. Greer recalls feeling at a remove from ceramics process because of the requirement of sending the piece away to the kiln. This is a woman whose hands flutter before her when she talks– like bird wings, paint brushes, or tools searching for something to do, for material to manipulate. “What I am doing now, I have been doing my whole life. I have always been a maker. Children are given craft materials by the yard. As a child I learned to finger-weave, crocheting yard after yard on family car trips,” says Greer. And returning to fiber after years of clay, which lets face it is cold vs the warmth of yarn, felt right. “’What is the best way to convey my ideas?’ I asked. We all have immediate interaction with fabric. We touch it nearly every minute of the day,” Greer says.

And this intimacy mitigates what is otherwise craft in service of the spectacle. For “Dare” is nothing if not spectacular with its enveloping greenness of the draped chandeliers opening out to a view of a human-sized black bird spewing masses of tangle whiteness from its enormous open beak. Light from darkness. That the piece, according to the curator is inspired by Tintoretto’s “The Origin of the Milky Way” (which “addresses the Roman myth in which the milk of Juno’s breast rose to the sky to create the galaxy”) gives context to the bird’s action as well as the crystal, bead, and button encrusted “stars” on one side of the gallery. “Dare alla luce” is apparently an Italian expression for giving birth which translates directly as “to give to the light” which makes things a little confusing as we are either giving the light (stars) based on the inspiration or giving to the light (birth) based on the title. Greer has said that the piece considers “not giving birth but being born.” If that’s the case, here we are are present at the birth of the galaxy. Entirely appropriate then, the spectacle. Funny that we enter through the result, the lush greenness of our little corner of the evolved galaxy, rather than entering through the darkness (which is at the far end of the exhibition space).

Ironically, the weakest part of the installation is the one not created via crochet or other crafty strategies like the buttons and beads sewn onto the stars. The decorative wall painting that wraps the piece is so much Blik wall decal with the swirls and birdies that you’d find in a 20-something’s apartment, not undermining but only peripherally distracting from an otherwise highly cohesive piece that engages on so many levels.

—Lisa Radon

UPDATED: to reflect correct spelling of “dare”