We’d like to think the world we create for our children is a blissful one – safe, secure, wholesome, enchanting – full of fluffy stuffed animals, sweet bedtime tales and loving adult protectors.
Meanwhile, the threats to our children that get a lot of attention are often sensationalized and physical in nature: stranger danger, Amber alerts, razor blades in Halloween candy, neglect, media exposure. But what about more covert threats, those emotional and psychological in nature, the ones that aren’t as easy to see or control, the ones that don’t grab headlines?
While we may want to shield our children from the physical threats of the outside world, perhaps the big bad wolf actually lurks inside the home through the ways we socialize and cultivate our children, the values we impart, the neuroses we imbed.
It is this landscape that Durango artist Patti Singer explores through a body of work currently on display at the Art Gallery at Fort Lewis College in a show called “unre(Solved).”
The territory that Singer ventures into is dark, challenging and unsettling. And her major medium – sculpture and installation using repurposed children’s toys – makes it all the more so. The fact that we all had toys growing up creates a commonality for anyone to approach her work.
“I think (toys) connect people to their unconscious and to their nostalgia. That all has to do with understanding yourself psychologically,” said Singer, who has lived in Durango for about 12 years and last year earned an MFA from the low-residency program at San Francisco Art Institute. “That’s a motivation for this body of work, to explore our childhood and how it psychologically informs us as adults. Toys are socialization objects that impart values to us, and are usually our culture’s and parents’ values that we’re picking up or not, or rejecting.”
The darkness in Singer’s work is unavoidable. In her wall sculpture “Rockabye,” a tree trunk morphs into the head and torso of a menacing wolf that holds a tiny bunny inside a cradle. In her large installation piece, “The Private Room,” paintings and repurposed stuffed animals depict scenes of adults, children and animals, secrets, sexualization and indiscretions.
Singer said that while the themes are uncomfortable, they’re important to examine.
“The dark stuff that gets transferred is lied about,” said Singer, who roots much of her art in the critical theory of Freud and child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. “In our minds and in society, we want to think that our kids are protected and live innocent lives. But that’s not true.”
While the themes tend to be dark, Singer’s process for producing the work is dark as well, but in a more playful way. With “Rockabye,” for instance, she crafted the tree using panty hose and attached it to the toy wolf. There was one problem with the wolf, a predator in the wild: It was too nice looking.
“I made his head because you can’t buy a stuffed animal that’s that threatening,” Singer said. “So I went in and made him more threatening.”
For “The Private Room,” Singer began with a pile of stuffed animals four feet high and 10 feet in diameter. “I sat around cutting their heads off, cutting their tails off, cutting their feet off,” she said. “And then I sewed them all back up in different configurations.”
Like the subject matter and content of her work that forces physical and emotional responses from viewers, Singer hopes the medium of sculpture and installation does the same.
“I think because of the physicality of installation, I think it asks a lot of the viewer. It asks you to participate,” she said. “You might have a painting that hangs on the wall and you might walk by it a million times. And maybe someone who’s motivated and passionate might interact with that painting all the time. But with this you’re kind of physically forced – psychologically and emotionally – forced to make a decision yourself.”
Singer’s work is challenging, exploring taboos and unsettling tropes and juxtapositions about innocence and innocence lost. But it is also whimsical, playful and dreamlike. Taken altogether, it is an experience that provides insight into our collective psyche and is sure to jerk you from your comfort zone.
“Unre(Solved)” runs through Nov. 16.
dholub@durangoherald.com. David Holub is the Arts & Entertainment editor for The Durango Herald
If you go
Patti Singer’s mixed media show “unre(Solved),” showcasing sculptures and installations using repurposed children’s toys, will be on display through Nov. 16 at the Art Gallery in the Art Hall at Fort Lewis College. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free
