THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601060053
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
WHEN ACTOR Dean Martin died last month, none of the obituaries mentioned that he unwittingly ate the liver and heart of a woman while dining at the table of Idi Amin in Uganda.
Craig Nilsen, however, ``knew'' this. Nilsen is among the 18 Tidewater Community College art faculty members exhibiting through next Sunday at TCC's Visual Arts Center at Olde Towne.
Nilsen also ``knew'' that in 1956, hockey player Bobby Orr skated over and severed his opponent's finger - and refused to return it. Kept it in his locker as a kind of trophy.
For a piece called ``True Facts/ Aphorisms,'' the artist relates five similarly ghastly anecdotes, each of them recounted in a clever facsimile of journalistic style. The stories are recounted on panels, accompanied by maxims and small, toylike assemblages on wall pedestals.
For instance, a tale about how Charles Darwin ate only the meat of animals high on the evolutionary chain (monkeys, dogs, cats) goes with the adage ``Making do builds trust'' plus an arrangement of toy dinosaurs at a birthday party.
Nilsen is pulling our chain. He made up the stories. But they are told so well, they sound real. If you don't watch it, you'll find yourself believing them. Haven't stranger things been true?
So, what's the point - aside from making us feel like dumb chumps?
The big lesson here seems to be: Be wary of what you're being fed, whether from the media, history texts or even artists. We are vulnerable to lies and slanting agendas. Question authority. Don't be sucked in.
For the show brochure, Nilsen wrote: ``I like to think about what things mean, about how we understand words, about why we believe the things we read and hear and say.''
Though it's a little aggravating to be taken in, Nilsen's point is the same one made in significant art through the ages. Art should refresh your view, and make you shake the cobwebs from your mind and eye.
Nilsen is a restless spirit, whose work has constantly evolved through the years. The same could be said of art instructor Bene Wilson, whose work has made a drastic turn over the years from geometric metal forms to her latest body of work, a series of soft and unruly nest- or womblike objects made mostly of natural materials.
Wilson's work honors the feminine as a source of life. Wilson, by the way, has been a beekeeper in her spare time; you can imagine she might have been somewhat inspired by hives, which are fabulous constructions with both organic and geometric aspects.
Anne Iott, head of the Visual Arts Center, is a nationally known maker of art books. A major new work called ``Inheritances & Instructions'' dominates a side gallery. The enormous piece opens like an accordion across a long pedestal, and is a continuation of a recurrent theme - childhood memories.
Collages along the face of the work include photocopies of useless objects along with instructions for their use - such as an electric fork which, when plugged in, has no added function. The collection of images is amusing and poignant, and encourages personal interpretation.
Ed Gibbs' color photographs reveal a quirky sense of humor. His upside-down rhino floating in a sea of darkness is a weird icon. Think what you like. It works on the viewer's psyche like a punning dream image.
From the film ``The Gods Must Be Crazy,'' we learned that rhinos are nature's firefighters. They see a fire in the forest, they rush in and stomp it out. That so, maybe Gibbs' rhino, like some mythic constellation, was putting out a fire in the night sky.
That is, unless the film director was rating a Nilsen and pulling our legs. Would somebody please pass me an encyclopedia? ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``Upside Down Rhinoceros'' (1995), a photograph by Ed Gibbs, works
on the viewer's psyche like a punning dream image.
by CNB