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If forecasts of an unusually white winter prove correct, some of the eight sculptures in the Kreeger Museum’s “Still Something Singing” may well benefit. The outdoor exhibition includes Adam Bradley’s “Furies,” three hovering horizontal female figures assembled from patch wood and scrap metal, whose flight might appear all the more mythic if seen above snow-covered ground. And snowy branches would be an apt addition to Roger Cutler’s solemn “Memory Tree,” a set of five hanging bells engraved with the names of seven artist and musician friends who have died in the past decade.
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But there are other pieces in the show, such as Steve Wanna’s “Ferns, Scrawned Black” and Maryanne Pollock’s “Refuge With D.C. Roses,” that ask viewers to sit, linger and contemplate. A warmer day would be more congenial to Wanna’s sound piece, which intertwines snatches of a Mary Oliver poem with the increasingly strident tones of Asian wind and percussion instruments, or Pollock’s two colorfully painted tents, which people are encouraged to enter and “draw, meditate, chat or just space out.” None of those activities are especially compatible with shivering.
The show is one of a series of Kreeger Museum collaborations with other institutions and organizations, in this case the Washington Sculptors Group. It was juried and curated by Betsy Johnson, assistant curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and titled after a poem by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón, who asked that even amid times of chaos, “isn’t there still something singing?”
Not all the sculptures speak to such themes as crisis and loss. Korean-born Hyunsuk Erickson ponders the overlap of her two cultures with “Thingumabob Tribe (#2) 3,” a grouping of slender pillars made by wrapping colorful synthetic yarn around PVC pipe. The 11 vaguely humanoid columns vary in height and detailing, but all have a cartoonish, Dr. Seuss-like quality. They give their little square of the Kreeger’s garden a playground vibe.
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Donna Cameron, Barbara Josephs Liotta and Donna M. McCullough offer works in their familiar modes, but each is rendered distinctive by its open-air setting.
Cameron’s “Green Film Towers” abstracts photo-derived images of D.C.’s Old Post Office, Chicago’s Willis Tower and New York’s World Trade Center. The locations are personal, since the artist has lived and worked in all three cities. The color refers to Oz’s Emerald City, as well as to the plant forms collaged into the composition. The image is flat, but printed on both sides of a free-standing metal panel, so the piece itself has a certain architectural character.
Liotta has long arrayed multiple stone shards in midair by suspending them on cords. These are usually hung from ceilings, but here they dangle from the branches of a tree, which makes them more dynamic and integrates them into nature, the granite chunks’ original source. The artist likens her assemblages to “chamber music,” and in this piece, two sets of three strands play a kinetic duet.
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Feminine attire made of industrial materials is McCullough’s specialty. The artist plays on the contrast between traditional notions of women’s delicacy and what her statement calls their “steely resolve.” There’s also an environmental element to McCullough’s work, since she employs mostly recycled metals. Her “Savannah” is a long dress whose seemingly soft pleats are made of copper. It was fashioned from former rain gutters and downspouts, fixtures given a new but still outdoor purpose.
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While McCullough chose copper that’s already well-weathered, Cutler cast bells of brass, steel and copper and deliberately left some surfaces unprotected. The metal is meant to oxidize, allowing the text engraved in it to become more legible. On one bell, the phrase “rust in peace” is emerging. As the weather changes, and the trees and plants outside the Kreeger slip into wintry slumber, Cutler’s memorial bells will be seasoned by their own life cycle.
If you go
Still Something Singing
Kreeger Museum, 2401 Foxhall Rd. NW. 202-337-3050. kreegermuseum.org.
Dates: Through Jan. 27.
Admission: $10; $8 for students, teachers, seniors and military personnel; free for members and ages 18 and under.
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