#5 FLOWER POWER EPILOGUE

Michael Ceshiat's "Power Flower", 2008, clay and mixed media.

This modular installation oasis is a tour de force evoking the sense of walking into the animated presence of a delightful magic garden, a frozen explosion or large entwining tropical jungle tree's detonating embrace.

The rainbow of basic colors and toylike transformations of land mines and bombs into morphs of chubby flowers and plantlike elements echo the 'My Trick Ride' theme of imminently dangerous weapons [the metaphoric sword] transformed into benign playthings, if not plowshares.

Here, a cascading merry-go-round carousel flourishes and unravels like an inviting zenesque Japanese garden of military industrial fruits, flowers, stalks and seedpods frozen in a somewhat macabre dance of death cloaked as a whimsical trumpeting comic strip grotto of affectionate amusement. It is as if an ammunition dump from a child's fairy tale has been ignited.

A great deal of effort has been invested in the manufacture of the scores of ceramic pieces assembled in this Neo-Victorian centerpiece. The technical expertise required to fire and glaze the temperamental pottery pieces is substantial yet easily overlooked here by the uninformed. The transporting, packing, and arranging of this work's components requires great organization, love, and calculation. 'Power Flower' is like the Coney Island July 4th of a munitions magnate's warped egotistical delusions and mad infantile ecstasy.

Betty Hahn's "Pink Flowers, Perth Australia", 1986, type C prints:

At first glance these medium sized photos in their subdued pastel colors appear completely domestic and forthright as if lifted from a Burpee seed catalog, your sister's almost vintage photo album or late 19th century handcolored stereocards. Looking closer at the background one seems to observe other dimensional glimpses of a vast, precipitous, distantly expansive landscape which informs us that the setting for this garden was not your average back yard but rather the edge of the Himalayas until the title informs us and we conclude "Ah--an exotic ecosystem of the rolled over continent Down Under."

Closer examination, for those familiar with horticulture and agriculture, appears to reveal that the domesticated looking pink Easter Sunday hat strawflowers portrayed here have run away wildly aflame and uncontrollable. It is Monet opening his floodgates; yet a palpable, real, breathing meadow of wild and wind whipped herbaceous satori; feral floriculture, utterly unconquerable; ever resilient subverting humankind's best laid plans; a dream idyll marches across the land.

NOTE: I offer my humblest apologies to the artists in this exhibit whose work I did not have a chance to write about. I had to leave prematurely due to a lingering adjustment to the diffused oxygen levels at Santa Fe's alpine elevation. [ Funny: It doesn't look like you're 7000 feet up!---gasp---gasp. ] If you read this and wish to send me images of your exhibited work I would enjoy writing about it. Donations of: Food, clothing, spare change, luxury automobile, trip to Cap d'Antibes or large yacht; etc., will be gratefully accepted in trade for my efforts.--Anon--Peter