art The Bridge is the artspace du jour taking a turn as foil to the well-funded and celebrity-approved galleries that occupy prominent Downtown Mall storefronts. And a welcome foil it is; let us rejoice that our art scene has the vital fringe it needs. (One might even call playful, non-commercial art the center, rather than the fringe.) Rather than in-your-face experimentation, the student-curated show at the Bridge displays a confident, lighthearted sense of its own interests.
 “Waterfalls Recycling” by Patrick Costello |
Those include craft—sewing is big, as in the careful embroidery on a human figure lying supine on a fabric log by Allyson Mellberg and Jeremy Taylor—and a general concern with artmaking as practice. It would be a familiar postmodernist move to put a plastic doll on a log gathered from the woods, then give it a title; the intensive handwork behind this piece elevates it to a far more interesting realm than that. Many of the works in the show have a careful, intricate look that results from repetitive motions of the artists’ hands, whether wielding a needle and thread or a stencil.
Another shared trait of these pieces is a gentle invitation to the viewer to touch, enter or otherwise interact. Victoria Long’s “Dream Fort,” a burlap tent, strongly evokes childhood—not just because it’s like a pillow fort inside, but because of its innocence; it practically giggles. Patrick Costello’s wall sculpture made of sewn felt, paper and plywood isn’t quite representational of its namesake waterfall. But it’s as concerned with physicality—the felt’s fuzzy greens and blues, the grain of the plywood—as a person is when wading in a creek. In other words, the viewer’s mind and body respond. Surprise: There is actual joy in these artworks.
