“Our goal is to leave just the black shoelaces and cords,’’ said gallery owner Joseph Carroll in an interview.
So get there early, before too much of the piece has departed the gallery, because it’s worth seeing in its most elaborate state. Called “Common Sense in Boston,’’ it is soft and domestic, yet also exuberant, splashy, and occasionally creepy. It’s impossible to pass through without encountering strands hanging like cobwebs. The work blends the dramatic gestures of abstract expressionism, associated at its height with a particular masculine bravado, with techniques and materials associated with women’s work.
The call to knitters also seems traditionally feminine, as if Pepe’s hosting a knitting bee. At a commercial gallery, art is a commodity. Objects have a weighty value that isn’t merely monetary; they have been carefully crafted for nuance and beauty, and so it’s rare that part of the process is to give it away, bit by bit, until it’s nearly gone. Here, too, Pepe makes an improbable conflation — between a canny conceptual conceit and warmhearted community outreach.
For good measure, she has some small sculptures on view, pieces that are both gaudy and deliberately homely. “Pink Shoelace Drawing #1,’’ made of sewn shoelaces, looks like a fleshy organ. The aglets in the shoelace drawings are impertinent, protruding here and there, more defiant than fringe. “Grey thing with dangly bit on chain,’’ made of painted fabric, metal, and wood, looks to me like a professorial slug with a cherry-red head, giving a demonstration with a large splinter of wood hanging on a chain. Ridiculous yet dignified.
Drawing in others We don’t usually associate drawing with public art. Sculpture, yes. Murals, sure. But drawing, generally, is a more intimate act with a more delicate product. “Drawing in Public,’’ curated by Liz K. Sheehan at Cambridge Arts Council’s CAC Gallery, shows how drawings can engage the public.
