The title Entropvisions is in homage to my mother, the poet and art critic, Harriet Zinnes. In 1990 New Directions published a collection of her poems titled Entropisms, a word she made-up combining entropy - the tendency toward disorder - and tropism - the growth towards or away from a stimulus. Similarly, my short reviews combine entropy and tropism by suggesting growth towards a vision of art from the chaos of the art world. Through the back door, my title also pays homage to my physicist father, Irving Zinnes, whose long discussions with my mom got her thinking about entropy and tropism in the first place.
Dierdre O'Connell & Jackie Shatz at SEFA
2023.2.6
The exhibition, Fire & Flurry, of work by Jackie Shatz and Dierdre O’Connell, hanging at Susan Eley Fine Art
(SEFA) downtown through Feb. 11, is a show of fantasy overlaying
reality, of the deeply personal manifested through the universal.
Widely known for her acting career, Tony-award actress Deirdre O’Connell
is a self-taught artist, clearly painting out of her inner need to make
images. In this show are two series, both glorifying women, albeit it
in dissimilar ways. Apparently
inspired by the 2017 Women’s March, her “Eve” paintings suggest
mythological figurines, exposed yet powerful, shielding mistreatment
through vague coverings and a soft, fog that wades through the canvases.
Her “portrait” series, made during the isolation of Covid lockdown as a
way to bring her friendships closer, is of her actress friends wearing
exotic fantastical outfits that perhaps hint at character traits if
you’re in the know, but for most us, bring the paintings into quasi
fairy-tale worlds. The ceramic sculpture of Jackie Shatz, though also
somewhat talismanic is actually more doll-like (Jackie made dolls as a
child), whimsical and life-affirming. Jackie says she often begins
with other artists’ paintings, for instance the horses of Susan
Rothenberg, or something she’s read, but her transformations belie their
beginnings. Jackie’s horses, women and imagined creatures are all
Jackie, and dance with the energy of life, an energy of pain overcome by
hope, of the broken ego made whole through love. For instance,
inspired by recent news reports on the sensitivities of octopuses, her
Octopus, with its rounded and interwoven tentacles becoming multiple
legs of movement, swims with the music of naive joy, finding its inner
strength within the rhythmic sounds of being, and in the process becomes a
girl with flowing hair; and her various Women -
flying, dancing or just sliding - seem to say, “Though wounded, I am
Me, and I give to You.” To see all photos, as well as past reviews,
please go to Instagram link in bio at @entropvisions or my website: www.alicezinnes.com/entropvisions--blog-