Donna Kriekle Commentary

The Drawers - Donna Kriekle Commentary written by Julie Oakes

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An Exotic Erotic Christmas, Dec 9 - Jan 11, 2007

Amongst all of the 'isms' where do you place Donna Kriekle's opalescent, metallic renderings of grasshoppers courting, fore-playing and eventually copulating? In the realm of delight, whimsy and play.

Art has been historically associated with the lofty realms, high and intellectual thoughts, religious inquiries, votive inspiration and moral example. Lighter and less pontificating were the pastorals; neo-classicism and beauty rising to the surface and allowing for sensual appreciation. Donna takes a rather annoying bug, the grasshopper which is especially obnoxious to prairie people, and grants it light consideration. In doing so, the fragile exoskeletons, painted with metallic paints become as gorgeous as the scarab jewelry of the Egyptians. To further the reclamation of dignity, Donna has depicted them mating adding a prelude to the sex act that parallels human mating activities. She grants them specificity with vague identities, preferences and grace. The thin legs of the grasshoppers form patterns, their brittle arms clasp each other to their breast plates and the pictorial depiction of sex in the field is presented from a perspective that is eye to eye with the act, right in the range of the intimate buggy encounter.

The black backgrounds with the iridescent paint further allude to science fiction. The robotic semblance, aerodynamic shapes and architectonic angles, as they glow from the darkness of a matt black ground remind us that within nature lie the origins of the mechanical. There is also a grim insinuation that the toxic chemicals used to spray the grasslands and protect the harvest for human consumption just might have crept into the biological makeup of the grasshoppers and created their eerie luminosity. Perhaps there is a philosophy related to quantum physics at play in the miniature dance of the grasshoppers and Kriekle's delight is the pathway to the awareness of the interconnection between species.