“smART”

The joke’s probably been told a hundred times: “That artwork at the Moody Gallery sure is moody!” Ba-dum-ching. Thing is, it’s true. The current group show, “smART,” swings crazily from the cute and curious to the spooky and dark. If there hasn’t been enough wordplay already, “smART” references Merrilee McCommas’s work, which highlights words within words, like ERAse, a mixed-media sculpture made up of thousands of pencil erasers. But waste not, McCommas used the pencils for the equally impressive wRITE.

Tim Roda’s family is one twisted trio. Roda’s creepy, sepia-tone photographs are dingy, depraved depictions of domestic discipline (wordplay!). Roda’s young son is seen in various situations of utter weirdness. Ropes and cords hang at odd angles, and in one, Roda himself is suspended from a wooden frame, in a kind of torture position, while his son (in foreground) talks to himself on a tin-can telephone. The photos are like snapshots from the killer videotape in The Ring. Saralene Tapley’s striking oil-paint portraits are the antidote, until Travis Somerville’s installation of vintage racist memorabilia plunges you into a kind of fascinated depression. Bring your medication.

This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2007.