Beautiful Creatures, curated by Billy Hunter and Jeanne Moore Hunter of Mosaic Productions, features regional artists Sandra Cardew, Mary Fortuna, Gwen Joy, Madeleine Barkey, Glenn Barr, Teresa Petersen and Robert Mirek, showing sculpture in a different vein, portraying the figure and organic form with a playful whimsy.

Sandra Cardew and Mary Fortuna’s creatures are hand-sewn sculptures. Cardew’s dreamlike characters appear otherworldly or even archetypal. The materials are fragile, suggesting a vulnerability, which she explores further by pairing her creatures with stronger, protective partners. In her work, she uses “anthropomorphic forms and theatrical tableaux and the body, the thing we all share” to explore human identity and how it is connected to the natural world and beyond. The act of sewing and stitching allows Cardew to act as a healer and pull together disparate parts and make things whole again.

Mary Fortuna’s contribution of hand-sewn leather figures mix animal and human characteristics, resulting in charmingly strange anthropomorphic sculptures. The figures reflect a contemporary interest in the genre of doll-like forms found in ethnographic displays in anthropological museums. However, instead of being made of stone or clay, these representations have long, thin skin-like leather bodies. Colorful, graceful and dreamlike, some of these creatures have bird heads, multiple appendages, and even sexual organs. Fortuna maintains that there is no specific meaning attached to her figures; each character has a visual logic and emerges as an act of making it.

Gwen Joy, Madeleine Barkey and Glenn Barr use the child’s toy as a way of expressing social commentary and humor.  Gwen Joy’s hybrid figures, “Joy Toys”, feature doll faces with stuffed animal bodies.  Endearingly strange, these soulful folk art creatures, made of humble weathered and worn materials, are created with a purpose; they are meant to lighten the soul and hopefully inspire us to be a little bit nicer. Joy refers to each little creature as a misfit, desperately in need of an understanding home, and attributes to each one a personality, which she then shares on facebook. Being given a voice that goes out to Joy’s 5000 facebook friends, the creatures are given the opportunity to spread good vibes with jokes and playful social commentary.

Madeleine Barkey’s painted animal creatures move on wheels like old-fashioned wooden toys, yet these pieces are much larger and stranger than their traditional counterparts. Upon closer examination, you can see the artist’s playfulness and humor. “Rabbitoserous” is a rabbit with rhinoceros horns, “Too Tall Rooster” is a rooster with unusually long legs,” Squirrel Peck” is a squirrel with a beak.

Glenn Barr’s humor has a darker tone as he creates a seedy carnivalesque atmosphere with strange pairings and juxtapositions. Angels, devils, oversized heads, child-like creatures, and scary figures with exaggerated features all share the same space, and in some cases are enclosed behind bars in a toy circus cage; creating a hazy, decadent post industrial universe.

Adding a feminist perspective to the post-industrial experience, Teresa Petersen’s wood slat collages, made from vintage prints, catalogues and magazines, explore female stereotypes and dreams. The works are interactive and fun to play with. The slats slide to change the composition, story and mean. “The Warrior Maiden” and “Surrounded by Fire” beg the viewer to look closely at the artful assemblage of compelling and engaging images that communicate the complexity of the current feminist struggle for autonomy and self-fulfillment. The characters can be viewed as symbols of strength lying dormant within, ready to be ignited whenever needed.

Diverging from the figure and deeply influenced by organic, biological and botanical forms, Robert Mirek’s work gives off a primordial or possibly futuristic quality. Regardless of the widely varied materials used, each piece is bold; yet at the same time rendered with a delicate sensuality punctuated by exacting textural gestures that suggests life and movement. These somewhat cellular or molecular shapes are detailed with a subtle luminosity that makes you think that you are looking through a microscope at unusual life forms that have been enlarged and turned into sculpture.

The exhibit playfully combines kitsch with tradition and opens the door to reflect on the possibilities of turning dolls into contemporary sculptures, which express individual sensibilities. The exhibit does not disappoint and runs through February 20 at the Madonna University Exhibition Gallery.

-Gabrielle Pescador