The ragged geometries of withered weeds, faded patches of scrub, wilting wildflowers and etiolated branches are the subjects of Sarah Hadley’s color photographic celebration of Midwestern fields as they approach winter’s grim reaper. Setting her deeply involving and finely delineated subjects against soft-focused backgrounds, Hadley produces the vegetal equivalents of portraits, with each humble and dying specimen gaining dignity and sculptural individuality. The latent message of Hadley’s series—that there is resonant beauty in what is left in the wake of vitality—is familiar in contemporary photography, but she delivers it with a special grace that makes us think of the autumn of human life and how we ignore its complicated incitements to appreciate and revere. In “Grey Dancer,” a desiccated prairie stalk still stands tall and seems to whirl like a dervish in its elegantly attenuated form. (Michael Weinstein)
Sarah Hadley shows through April 6 at Chrome Gallery, 1462 N. Milwaukee
A New Vision: A Review of Milwaukee's Sarah Ball Allis Art Museum Curator Kate E. Schaffer has gathered a group of works by femme, women and nonbinary artists that interacts, intervenes and innovates with the museum’s permanent collection to reveal the life of the explorer, traveler, caretaker and collector Sarah Ball Allis.
RECOMMENDED
