The Museum: The Art of Communication
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I started my exploration at the Barbie booth, officially called Richard Stasewich & Friends. Stasewich (who first created Barbie scenarios in his front yard, as the Reader reported about a year ago) has set up a green-carpet croquet lawn, with Barbie dolls as wickets and heads of Ken dolls as balls. Each wicket tells a little Barbie story: Indian Maiden Meets Space Cowboy, Barbie Gets a Spanking, and Catfight Barbie were my favorites. As an added perk, Stasewich has provided a Barney Bowl–I knocked down nine of the cheerful purple dinosaurs with the onions he supplied. Very satisfying.
After that catharsis I took a break, lounging in the cafe in a recliner with a bowl of Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch Cereal and some coffee (the Sunday-brunch menu). Here I found out that the belly dancers, two of the storytellers, and another dancer wouldn’t be performing. (It’s probably better to go to one of the evening shows: bigger audiences and a full cast available.) But I was able to talk Osundele Oyayemi into telling me an African myth in the grass-thatched “dangerous hut.” I also made a collage/journal page to be posted in Jennifer Savarirayan’s installation Carry On, a piece about travel and change that incorporates slides and a wallful of maps with an intimate crafts area at its heart. As the small audience wandered through the exhibits Monika Kimrey and Sylvia Arnstein worked on their paintings, and everyone was willing to talk. Oyayemi gave a few of us a tour through her subtle piece, Faces Of, a series of altars lit by candles and decorated simply with cups of wine and objects related to deities from both the Christian and Yoruba traditions. Like most of the artists, she displays audience responses as part of the exhibit: we wrote down on index cards our answers to the question “How does your higher power speak to you?” integrating our spirituality with others’.
