Mary Ann Papanek-Miller - Looking for Alice: You Won't Know Who to Trust

I recently saw Papanek-Miller's new show Looking for Alice: You Won't Know Who to Trust at NIU's Jack Olsen Gallery. In short, it was underwhelming. Her style of layering images and cartoon is initially appealing, but loses itself to its technique, without suggesting something deeper. There is an obvious surface attention to narrative, but it seems a borrowed one, a distilled childhood made of disturbing cliches.

Certainly some of her compositional work is successful, the "and a bear passed by" series 1.1-1.3 particularly. But there is a forced inclusion of an environmental awareness that seems out of place, in addition to occasionally shoddy draftsmanship. The deeply entrenched childishness of the imagery is belied by the conservatively modern framing and occasionally jarring inclusion of an odd-man-out in a series of panels.

To be generous, the pieces are generally well executed and fun, if not exhaustingly repetitive. Her other layered works are far superior, both in composition and sophistication. This show is more a study of a technique than an expression of ideas, so if inchoate, forgivable.


"Looking for Alice, You Won't Know Who to Trust, 1.1."



more works can be found at Ms. Papanek-Miller's site