Review in the SEATTLE TIMES, March 5, 1998
BERKSHIRES WEEK,
August 14 - 20, 1997 ---- OUT & ABOUT -----
Gedney Farm Gallery, New Marlborough, MA; "Portfolio
1997"
ECLECTIC SHOW IN STURDY SURROUNDINGS
.... two of the most interesting artists on view
are Larry Calkins and Deborah Fleck-Stabley.
Calkins' work includes disturbing dress sculptures
made from cloth, clay and beeswax. The stiff
dresses seem to have a distressed history of
their own, and are hung from hangers on the wall
or on stands on the floor; some have sprouted
miniature heads and wheels. With threads hanging,
as if unfinished, the bodices of some have faint
images of faces, or are scribbled on by some
indicipherable hand. The arms of these stiff
figures are held out at crucified angles, and the
dress sculptures themselves have a haunted air,
frills frozen in time.
--- Randall Howe
NEW YORK TIMES, September
9, 1997; "NORTHWEST VISIONS"
American Primitiv Gallery, 594 Broadway, SoHo;
New York, NY
(...)
Larry Calkins, the most interesting of the three,
makes small dresses on hangers that look
like antique doll clothes and have a Shaker-like
elegance. He also paints odd, yet graceful
little pictures, like the image of a mouse in
a red tunic in front of a tree full of crows
with a burning house in the distance. In Mr.
Calkins' work there is a delicacy of touch
and an air of poetic fantasy that makes the work
of the others look mannered.
--- Ken Johnson