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ShapeShifter’s ‘Telephone Show’ shows evolution of images in 23 steps
A transient art group that specializes in pop-up shows lives up to its name with its latest exhibition. For “The Telephone Game,” ShapeShifter Gallery tasked 23 artists with creating a series of work, each based on the one that came before. The result is an intriguing display of shape-shifting images that morph from abstract to elephant-esque in 23 pieces.
The idea is based on the telephone game from childhood, in which people take turns whispering a message into the ear of the next person in line. By the time the last person speaks the message aloud, the message has radically changed, altered with each retelling.
The artists, who come from five states and Canada, had three weeks to create a piece as close or as loosely related to the previous one as they desired, as long as the product was new and directly inspired by the one before it. Many of the artists will be present at an opening reception Friday at AVA Gallery. Rather than a one-night pop-up show, “The Telephone Game” will be displayed through the end of the month.
The visual storytelling started with a mixed-media photo by Claire Bloomfield. Then Rylan Thompson created a work influenced by her piece. From there, 21 more artists joined in.
Thompson says he was mostly drawn to the overall composition of Bloomfield’s piece, “the two outer circles, and how they seemed to frame an image of some future space-age saint. At least that’s what I saw — I see faces in everything, though.”
He began by trying to mimic the outlying paint strokes, then pulled out “other fun bits and pieces” to create his own vague face. “I let my own intuition and playfulness fill in the gaps,” he says.
Artist No. 3, Heath Montgomery, says he wanted to “increase the magnification of what [Thompson] had presented and also explore the dream without bringing too much into focus.”
Artist No. 4, Sue Fox, says she wanted to step out of her boundaries for this project, focusing on the feeling of being disjointed. “The end result is something I would have never made on my own.”
With each artist, the inspiration piece offered a new challenge.
Artist No. 5, Damien James, saw intersecting lines “full of energy” that he used to create an aerial perspective of a cityscape.
No. 6, Carrie Pendergrass, admits to being “kind of scared” by James’ “architectural rendering” and branched into ordered crystalline forms, liking “the minimalist vibe,” she ended with.
Artist 15, Eric Rivera, riffed on “the most important and interesting art form in the world right now,” tattoo flash art, to evolve from Daniel Peterson’s contribution (No. 14).
Those tattoos spun into old drawings and paper clippings from a family kitchen drawer for Artist No. 16, Mark Leamon, to reconstruct a memory of “hanging out at my grandma’s house.”
Artist No. 18, Caitlin Dickens, admits “the chaotic nature of the work before mine [Sean Abrahams, No. 17] filled me with anxiety.” She ended with “an imperfect attempt at escaping the pressure.”
Artist No. 19, Myles Freeman, rotated Dickens’ image 90 degrees and tilted his computer screen back to distort the tonal information he saw.
“At a certain point, fairly early in the piece,” Freeman says, “I no longer worked from her image or referred to it in any way. It just became its own creature.”