MINIATURES
MAHVASH
Living in a miniature doll house. I play house as I paint my own sweet reality of a woman,a man,a child, and two cats...I am only a traveler passing through
WE ARE QUITE PLEASED WITH LIFE BUT OUR CAT HAS THE BLUES Acrylic on Canvas 40" x 52"
MAHVASH STUDIO 68 Canyon Ridge • Irvine, CA 92715 Telephone (714) 854-0747 Call for Studio Appointment or Artist Catalog
34 FALL 1994 FOLK ART
Patio Arte A collection of patio arte, or handkerchief art, a Southwestern folk art tradition that originated among incarcerated Chicanos and Latinos, is on permanent display at the Hourglass Gallery, a nonprofit organization located in the barrio of Albuquerque, N.Mex. Under the direction of Rudy Padilla, the gallery houses 500 pieces ofpato arte and other prison-made art and is dedicated to serving at-risk youth by providing a venue for educational presentations on cultural heritage and art. Pano arte was first recognized in the 1980s by a chaplain in a Texas County jail who gave the unique medium its first official notice and exhibition. The prisoners, using the most rudimentary of supplies, maintain a physical and emotional link with their families and loved ones in the outside world through this artistic activity. By using religious images and cultural symbols, social messages and personal fantasies are rendered on prison-issued hand-
LINDA RONSTADT; Walter R. Baca (1948-1993); Albuquerque, New Mexico; 1991; ink on cloth (Indio); 16 16'; collection of Hourglass Gallery
kerchiefs with ballpoint pens, colored and black pencils, melted crayon shavings, a paste made of coffee grounds, and a homemade black dye made of soot, ash, and soap. Inmates with a less restricted status have access to acrylic paint, pastels, watercolors, and markers. The patios are part of a larger visual arts tradition in rural and urban Latino communities that includes tattoos, murals, graffiti, and car painting. For more information, call 505/873-7758.
Boftlecap Sculpture The exhibition "Crowning Achievements: The Crimped and Cutting Edge in Bottlecap Sculpture," presented by In'tuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, will open September 30 in Chicago. Bottlecaps have provided the raw material for a quintessential 20thcentury art form as creators ranging from unknown Boy Scouts to Chicago's Mr. Imagination have strung and pounded thousands of caps into figures, baskets, chains, totems, and other sculptures in which whimsy is fundamental and functionality optional. The
works of these creators and others, contemporary and anonymous, will be included in this In'tuit survey curated by Aron Packer and Bill Swislow. The show will feature the work of Iowans Clarence and Grace Woolsey, whose menagerie of figures, buildings, and other objects constitute a recent folk art find. For the show's location and other information, call 312/759-1406, or write to In'tuit, P.O. Box 10040, Chicago,IL 60610.