Fri 20 Nov 2009
Elizabeth Jameson has always sketched and sculpted dresses, beautiful frocks with beautiful women, lovely ladies in pretty skirts, sometimes just the skirts and dresses themselves, with the ladies long-gone. Using a variety of mediums, charcoal, water-color, fur, metal, wool and sugar, Elizabeth designs a fashion-forward portfolio of trendy garb for the modern age.
These days, her ladies and gentlemen are dressed for the coming Apocalypse. Fashion-forward, yet equipped for a nerve-or-mustard gas attack, her ladies are substantial and ethereal at the same time, anonymous yet familiar in their historic and vintage garb.
After just viewing the DOT viaduct earthquake video and watching previews of the the film 2012, thoughts of the end of the world are reeling in my brain. The Mayan calendar ends on 2012: will we have to deal with volcanoes, typhoons an earthquakes? Will gas masks become de rigeur for the new millennium?
Jameson focuses on what life would belike post war (apocalyptic). She envisions the world of corporations encouraging people to carry on as usual except for the addition of gas masks needed for the new paradigm. Her large 5′ x 7′ drawings are done in her gestural drawing style using heavy charcoal and pastels. A drawing of a crowd wearing gas masks seems beautiful and benign. Life as normal. One is drawn to this work by the strange marriage of pleasing images on first glance later to comprehend the dark reality that is portrayed.
Elizabeth’s show is currently at Fetherston Gallery on Capitol Hill until December 19th.
