Valdosta State University
Department of Art & Design
Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery
VSU Fine Arts Building
Corner of Brookwood and N. Oak Streets
Cute & Creepy
Featuring grotesque inspired artworks from the Pop Surreal or New Contemporary art movement
curated by Carrie Ann Baade.
October 16 – November 3
Gallery talk with artist and curator Carrie Ann Baade: Monday, October 16, 5-6PM
Public Reception: Monday, October 16, 6-7:30PM
Given the fantastical nature of the artwork, the public is invited to attend the gallery lecture and reception in costume!
Gallery Hours: Monday-Thursday: 8:30am-5:30pm, Friday: 8:30am-3pm
Contact: Julie Bowland, Gallery Director, 229.333.5835, jabowlan@valdosta.edu
Cute & Creepy Artists: Carrie Ann Baade of Tallahassee, Florida; Kelly Boehmer of Pooler, Georgia; Lori Field of Montclair, New Jersey; Laurie Hogin of Mahomet, Illinois; Jessica Joslin of Chicago, Illinois; Chris Mars of Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Chet Zar of Monrovia, California.
In 2011 Carrie Ann Baade, artist and currently Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Florida State University (FSU) curated a fantastical and visionary art exhibition titled Cute & Creepy. Featuring the art of 24 contemporary artists whose work celebrates the grotesque, macabre, and monstrous, the exhibition proved to be one of FSU’s Museum of Fine Arts most popular exhibitions. Ms. Baade has generously recreated a scaled down version of Cute & Creepy for the Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery. Seven of the original artists are featured in this exhibition which offers a dark and sometimes humorous sense of the absurd.
Nancy Hightower, author of the original Cute & Creepy catalog essay writes: “We need monsters in our lives… We like to fear them, to run hiding under the covers or clenching a lover’s arm until the monster is destroyed or banished to far off lands. They are wonderful like that, refusing to ever completely disappear from our lives, affording us the opportunity for self-introspection if we take a moment to recognize that monsters don’t die because they are essentially us (Cohen 5).”
Hightower goes on to say, “(the grotesque) is an operation, a process that occurs when one is caught in between a moment of humor and horror, or horror and beauty—held in perfect suspension so that neither overrides the other. We are left in a moment of paralysis, unsure of what to think, unable to look away.”
Work cited:
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
-Julie Bowland, Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery Director