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September 27-October 22, 2006 The Allen Priebe Gallery of The University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh Co-curated with Yael Lipschutz Susan Hamburger mines the traditionally female dominion of the home to unearth social and psychological dimensions of decorative objects. Her large and sensuously painted Truss canvases exhibit lavish, bound drapery that advertises seduction yet simmers with inner unease. The beauty and neuroticism of these tethered window treatments allude to the attraction of middle-class women to the endless project of beautifying their domestic surroundings. By contrast the Ongepatchket series depicts archetypes of interior design held up to the American woman as aesthetic models: ornate vases lie coquettishly aside lush velvet curtains in these nimbly painted canvases. That Ongepatchket is a Yiddish word meaning overly done or garish signals that these paintings are time capsules returning us to the home, and design aesthetic, of Hamburger’s immigrant grandmother. Thoug...

September 21 – October 29, 2006 Hampden and Central Galleries, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Victoria Calabro, Katherine Daniels, Marilla Palmer, Anna Pedersen Mark Power, Diana Puntar, Carol Salmanson, Gae Savannah This exhibition explores the refinement of attitudes and ideas in the formation of a current sculptural aesthetic. It presents a physical argument on the merit of accepting the concept of sophistication as a qualification of artistic talent. How does the look of one art work versus another determine our ability to judge its value? The title refers to a book by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, which dictates how a certain degree of sophistication is necessary for wild men to raise themselves into a civilized situation, determined first by the use of language, especially in written forms, and second by whether or not food is cooked or consumed raw. In art history, the language of sculptural expression has altered radically from its prominent usage as a means of...

Poetry involves both conscious and unconscious processes. During writing, poets sometimes try to bypass consciousness, using drugs and dream. Khubla Khan was said to have emerged straight from the subconscious. Sometimes poets try to make their poems bypass the reader's consciousness. Here I'll look at a few reasons why they do this, the methods used, and their consequences. A feeling can have a greater impact if its cause is ineffable even though visceral, inexplicable reactions may not be a sign of depth and profundity. Some passages of music make the hairs raise on the back of our necks. Scientists played such music (actually by Pink Floyd) to chickens and discovered that their feathers rose at the same point. A feeling can have a greater impact if its cause is unknown. If an image is flashed too briefly for the conscious mind to appreciate, it can still influence us, and our rational mind finds it harder to resist its message - which is why subliminal advertising is banned ...