The subject of this article of writing is small art. The reason for this particular subject is this: Three galleries in town—Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Shift Collaborative Studio, and Foster/White Gallery—have shows that feature small works of art. Small and Flat: Work Within Limits is at Jacob Lawrence; Small Works Exhibition is at Shift; and Small Works is at Foster/White. Though they share the same subject, the galleries do not share the same purpose. For one, Jacob Lawrence, the theme of smallness is a generative device; for another, Shift, it is a generative and a commercial device; for the last, Foster/White, it is primarily a commercial device.
Let's start with the last gallery in the previous paragraph and work our way backward. The works at Foster/White are small because that brings them within the price range of people who are shopping for Christmas gifts. Simple enough. The next step: Because the small art is not for serious buyers or collectors, but for those looking for interesting gifts, the art in Foster/White is not challenging. The art in this exhibit never goes below the level of awful and never rises above being just fine. Examples of being fine or acceptable are Allen Wolf's bright and ripe abstractions of summer fruits, Primavera (16 by 20.3 inches, $1,000) and Été (16 by 20.3 inches, $1,000); Eva Isaksen's Rhymes series (each 14 by 11 inches and $700); and James Martin's whimsical scenarios (Tuners, a drunken primate playing a piano, 13 by 18.5 inches and going for $900).
There's a good reason why not one of these art objects is challenging. The Christmas shopper's main dilemma (outside of price) is finding gifts that will be liked or loved. To give a disappointing gift is the Christmas shopper's nightmare. To minimize this risk—the risk of giving a disappointing gift—the works on display at Foster/White are easy to wrap up, easy on the eyes, easy to hang on any wall.
Though Shift's Small Works Exhibition has the holiday season as its context, it makes little or no effort to seduce the ideal subject of the holiday spirit: the shopper. This show is about the artist, not the buyer. The person who purchases a work with the idea of wrapping it up as a gift is a person who does not fear the Christmas shopper's ultimate nightmare. He or she accepts the enormous risk of giving something that may never be appreciated.
One sample of the art in Shift: On the wet day I visited the gallery, artist Amanda Mae was setting up her small art objects on the wall next to the entrance. The objects are little transparent boxes that contain tiny human remains—an eyelash, a bit of lip flesh, minuscule balls of earwax. Only a handful of Americans would find in these strange objects an ideal Christmas gift, which is precisely the substance (or meaning) of this show: the twisted fact that the objects are not Christmas objects, not compatible with the spirit of the holidays. The exhibit uses the season as context and then flagrantly rejects its themes, concerns, and happy (phony) humanism.
The exhibit at Jacob Lawrence has nothing to do with Christmas; its entire meaning is size itself. Artists were asked to produce works limited to four by four inches on paper and one square inch for sculptures—the show's meaning does not go beyond those restrictions. The result is, of course, mixed. But there are two outstanding works. Both are by photographers: Robin Crookall and Laurel Schultz.
Let's begin with Schultz's photograph Landfall. The rock, the sea, the sky are fake. But that is not what makes the image exceptional. Instead, it is the epic beauty of the fake. The sublime feelings that the real rock and sea would inspire are still here, but now at a miniature register. It's like watching a flea singing a magnificent opera. A small but great feeling; a small but large sense of the wonderful.
Crookall's untitled photographs do something similar, except her fake and miniature subterranean space arouses the opposite of the small sublime: the mini dread. This basement, which is made from cardboard and glue, has a network of dead pipes, a dead box, a dead chair, and a staircase leading up to the light of a dead sun. When you first see the image, your being is knocked out of its stable place in time and space. You can't identify exactly what's wrong with the basement, why it's so grim and malevolent. You near it in the way you'd near a corpse. You near it cautiously. When you realize what's wrong (it's not real), it's too late: A part of you is trapped in that basement forever. As you leave the gallery, you leave something of yourself in there, in that other world of the very small. 
