Let’s Play House
Kristina Arnold celebrates the joys, hassles and dilemmas of domesticity
by David Maddox
In much of Kristina Arnold’s work, references to her previous life as a biomedical researcher dominate. Her constructions of plastic and string take the look of nerve or lymph systems, but they’re laced with extraneous stuff, like decorative flower patterns, candy and crochet work. These materials form associations with the “women’s work” of knitting and feeding and with other sorts of networks, the things that tie together communities and families socially, historically and genetically. In her installation at the TAC Gallery, she moves seamlessly out of the lab and into the domestic realm that has always been part of the picture for her.
“Welcome Home” reflects Arnold’s recent experiences of getting married to a guy with two preteen kids, moving to Bowling Green (where she’s running the gallery at Western Kentucky University) and buying a house. The key material for this exhibit is bubble wrap, which must have been a big part of her life of late as she moved out of wherever she was and into this arrangement that’s new on about every level. The bubble wrap covers the walls and floors of the gallery, transforming it into the interior of a packing container that holds several elements. At the exhibit’s entrance, a curtain set like you’d find on the small window over a kitchen sink greets you. Five sections of map cut into a five-petaled flower shape (like a ’60s pop design) tumble out of the curtains or float up into them. They show places Arnold has lived—Nashville, Knoxville, the D.C. area and finally Bowling Green. It’s a goofy, happy welcome to a stereotypical Southern suburban home.
The main section of the gallery is occupied by a tent structure made from pink string crocheted into interlocking five-sided sections, creating an off-balance geodesic dome. The tent is weighted down by five pink-painted milk crates (another staple of moving day); five pink balloons float overhead, with more floral shapes in white Plexiglas suspended above them. All these elements are hung from a pink, flower-shaped wire framework. On the floor inside the tent sits an altar or fireplace in the same floral shape (yet again), with one layer made from bubble wrap. The hearth holds a pile of broken glass, probably fluorescent light bulbs—a reference to another inevitable and tedious part of moving, the broken stuff. All of it brings to mind the experience of camping out in your house when you move in and haven’t gotten boxes unpacked and furniture set up.
A decorative impulse takes over the space surrounding the shelter. Fourteen circular mirrors are laid on the floor, each a serving plate for pink and red buttons made from melted Jolly Rancher candies. The walls are accented with five-petaled flowers made from bubble wrap and with pink crocheted buttons of a size similar to the candies.
This piece has the deceptively simple focus and cohesion that make for successful installation art. Networks are present on several levels: in the strings that make the tent shape, in the crochet technique that knits strands onto themselves, and in the connection between these techniques and women throughout history who have set up houses and started families. The path from one element to the next brings decorating, feeding and clothing into close association—the circular mirrors could come from the decor of a suburban home; the candies are set out like hors d’oeuvres at a party, and their shape and size mimic the cloth buttons on the walls. The persistence of fives—in the shape and the number of balloons, milk crates, map sections, etc.—brings to mind either an obsessive-compulsive numbering scheme, or a quasi-religious acknowledgement of an unarticulated cosmological system.
The piece captures certain ambivalences of suburbia. Arnold clearly delights in her cheap materials, the bright pinks and reds and the way the bubble wrap pops if you step on it. The broken glass and other references to moving embody the kind of humorous fiasco stories that people share all the time, one of the everyday ways we form connections. But these extroverted gestures are set against a thwarted movement toward privacy. The tent opening faces the interior wall of the gallery, turning its back to the prying eyes of viewers, but the structure’s transparency completely undercuts its effectiveness as a shelter. The bubble wrap that’s supposed to keep your stuff from breaking still holds a pile of shattered light bulbs.
This installation acts out, in a striking and entertaining way, the pursuit of protection that cannot be achieved. This is one of the core social, and even spiritual, tensions that define the suburban landscape. Arnold puts her finger on those forces and gives them playful visual form. All of the details, like the pervasive pink color scheme, the use of common stuff and the references to everyday hassles, come together in a way that seems fundamentally good-spirited, warm and optimistic.
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