Art Exhibition Crabwalk: Hopping, Skipping and Jumping Through a World on Fire

article by Isa Gold

Fur, whiskers, wings, scales, stingers, teeth, petals, stems, sticks, strands of hair, cracked bowls, rainbows, and silver fields. Crabwalk is an exhibition of the strange and surreal where curiosities appear side-by-side, and paradox runs rampant. The organic and industrial merge in Cliff Tresner’s architectural sculptures; fiber and film are fused in April Dauscha’s multimedia works; Emily Ryan Stark and Emily Elhoffer’s voluptuous, fleshy forms at once evoke the grotesque and beautiful; sharp elegance emanates from Vincent Tiley’s metallic paintings; and abstraction collides with the figurative in Dara Engler’s animal portraits and JP Morrison Lans’s colorful encaustic pieces.

Between January 10th and February 1, 2024, the University of Louisiana’s Bry Hall Gallery will give onlookers the opportunity to cozy up to an eclectic collection of works by 14 multidisciplinary artists located across the United States. Though at first glance Crabwalk appears a spectacle of chaos, beneath its sundry façade the exhibition offers a meditative dialogue on several of the 21st century’s defining qualities: Technology, capitalism, the ecological crisis, identity politics, Feminism, and the scope of the human imagination are among the topics explored.

Underlying the show is an emphasis on the ordinary and existential. Whether through paint, fiber, paper, film, found objects, animals, architecture, or the figure, the artworks in Crabwalk investigate instances in which the strange and mundane appear, often simultaneously, in daily life. The 14 artists are unified in their surveys of the everyday, surreal, and mystical. Interestingly, though they come from distinct corners of the country, this cluster of creatives has appeared under the same roof before.

One particularly steamy afternoon, in mid-May 2023, a congregation of sculptors, fiber artists, painters, printmakers, and writers gathered in the Vermont Studio Center’s renowned Red Mill building for a 2.5-week artist residency. Although the group had no way of knowing it at the time, they would be the second-to-last cohort to occupy VSC’s historic studios before devastating floods inundated the town of Johnson, Vermont in July. Earlier that summer, and throughout the 2.5 weeks, Canadian wildfires spewed smoke and ash across New England and down the mid-Atlantic coast.

Fires and floods; flames and water; artists consistently seem to hover at the precipice of change and conflict. Although the climatic events of summer ’23 aren’t the subject of Crabwalk, the exhibition’s artists are nevertheless united by the contemporary context in which they’re creating. The multimedia show displays a series of artworks that function as products of, and windows into, an increasingly frenzied and disordered world.

Crabwalk’s artists offer responses to a climate in peril, a country in crisis, and a contemporary society that’s somehow both enriched and inhibited by its contradictions. Motifs of life and death are woven throughout Dauscha’s film and Engler’s paintings; references to Feminism erupt from Stark and Elhoffer’s sculptural works; the natural and biological are linked to the fabricated and mechanical in Tresner’s multimedia structures; growth and decay, joy and pain, and hope and fear saturate Lans and Tiley’s paintings. While these artworks are sincere (and occasionally melancholy), they’re never cynical, embracing candor and authenticity in place of pessimism. Bold colors, soft materials, and playful nods to otherworldly critters infuse Crabwalk with wit, humor, and the promise of rejuvenation and transformation. The exhibition exhales cautious optimism, kindling viewers’ imagination and nurturing their inquisitiveness.

This emphasis on curiosity and curiosities is enhanced by the assortment of artists and their varied narratives. The 14 creatives span a range of states, cities, ages, backgrounds, disciplines, and media. Their differences inevitably root Crabwalk in perspectives at once distinct and similar. The result? A harmonizing of opposites: The exhibition is loud but poetic, dynamic yet composed, animated but introspective. Though the artworks evoke a discernable edginess, any residual tension is soothed by an implicit respect for learning and instruction (as many of the artists are either teachers or current graduate students).

Crabwalk may initially feel like a tidal wave of energy, but the deeper one wanders, and the closer one inspects, the more tranquil and inviting the exhibition becomes. Viewers will find, if they spend enough time exploring its nooks and crannies, that the show whispers, rather than shouts. Crabwalk provides a safe space for self-reflection, prompts quiet contemplation, and encourages audiences to find thrill in the unknown of tomorrow. 

Crabwalk is on view at Bry Hall Gallery, University of Louisiana Campus, 1401 Desiard Street, Monroe, LA 71209. The Gallery is open from 8:00AM-4:30PM Monday-Thursday, and 8-11:30AM Friday. The exhibition runs from Jan. 10-Feb. 1, 2024.