Heidi Norton is the consummate packer, joining experiment with process, conceptual message, reference to art history, and meta-photography, just for starters, in her enigmatic works, which employ multiple forms (photography, painting and, most recently, sculpture and found objects), sometimes separately and sometimes in a mix. No doubt all of this variety is brought together by the motif in which it is packaged—plants and shrubs. Yet they appear in many guises, evoking disparate moods. As a result, none of the works in the show is representative of the whole or epitomizes it; each conveys its own meanings. “Dead Palm Burnt by the Sun” is a still-life photograph of a row of objects, including the wildly forlorn desiccated palm, on tabletop backed by a white sheet that has been put over the window behind it. The objects are attenuated in rough, even dynamic, elegance; a muted range of purple and plum constitutes the palette. It looks like a painting, not a photograph trying to simulate one. However one interprets it, “Dead Palm” makes decay enticingly vital. At Norton’s soft core we find art for art-play’s sake. (Michael Weinstein)
Through May 14 at Ebersmoore Gallery, 213 North Morgan, #3C
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
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