Combing through time and space

As a writer and unflinching disciple of the truth that art will make your life better, I think a lot about contrasts. Binaries and opposites, polarities and spectrums. In both art and the culture that nourishes it, the animating force is always a unique ability to sustain the maximum amount of difference while avoiding catastrophic disintegration. It’s a fine needle to thread.

It’s precisely this kind of balancing act that figures so deeply in Maggie Crowley’s exquisitely subtle new show, “Comb,” at Devening Projects. A scavenger hunt through time and space, the Chicago-based artist surveys the broad ideological landscape of masculine and feminine labor, creating personal paintings and sculptures alive with juxtapositions of pliant silk and unyielding steel. Look closely and you will piece together the disparate artifacts of a life lived.

Look closely at Crowley’s silk paintings and you will piece together the disparate artifacts of a life lived.Courtesy Devening Projects

In the large-scale Crashing into the mountain, we uncover a stamp-sized depiction of Mickey Mouse, a ghostly, oversized chainsaw blade, and a hail of orange disposable earplugs.  Suspended from a rod of angle iron, the gouache-stained silk is creased across the center by a free-standing armature. This isn’t a formally seductive object in a traditional sense. It looks worn and broken in—maybe broken down—but its somber hues and fragmented imagery are beautiful in their honesty. Crowley is sifting through her past and inviting us to do the same.

“Comb”Through 3/7: Sat noon-5 PM and by appointment, Devening Projects, 3039 W. Carroll, deveningprojects.com

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