A Squared

continued

Instead, I found a largely indifferent response — with notable exceptions — to the Art Center's fun, simple idea: make a square work with reference to the city.

Only eleven of the twenty-three artists bothered to follow these directions, and the resulting diversity dilutes what could have been a strong theme. One bald case of lazy recycling is Lynda Cole's somewhat beat-up paper assemblage A2 + A, which was exhibited recently at the Michigan Guild as Red Box.

The best works conformed to the Art Center's guidelines. Sue Holdaway Heys's cheery quiltlike wall hanging Local Color offers a stylized city map sewn with white-ribbon streets and appliquéd cloth landmarks such as Gratzi's and Gallup Park. Distortions result from space limits: Kerrytown is the same latitude north as the Gandy Dancer, and Gallup Park is in the lower right corner instead of on its own separate swatch about, say, twenty feet to the right, connected by a ribbon representing Fuller Road. But no matter! Two buglike cars, neither of them an SUV, make the streets look appealingly deserted, with apparently plenty of parking on the patches of dark fabric background — a paradise!