Review: New and Retrospeculative, Solo Exhibition. Anne Wright Wilson Fine Arts Gallery. Georgetown College. Georgetown, Kentucky, 2004

"Seductive and unsettling. Logical and confounding. Honest and secretive. Awkward and confident. Contradictions seem the only apt way to describe Stacey Chinn's recent sculptural works, which invite extended contemplation, but never fully answer the questions they pose.

A case in point: "Crutch" is a three-legged contraption. Two of its legs terminate in clamps that grip wooden stilts, while the third leg rests on a pedestal. Something is amiss: the prosthetic stilts look as if they would actually hinder free movement. Are these the "crutch"? What are we to make of a crutch that disables its user?

Chinn's works are like the tools of a lost culture. They suggest a use or a function that is fascinating to contemplate but ultimately remains elusive. Human scaled, they invite us to touch them, to wear them, to employ them. Their parts are arranged with a purpose and intention unavailable to us now: a leather strap wrapped loosely around a shiny ceramic spool; a woven steel basket cradling stones.

Seduction is woven throughout Chinn's works, but it's a seduction that just may lead to a sublime kind of torture. "Cinch" is alluring, sensual, and suffocating. The title of "Here Chickie Chickie" flirts shamelessly, while the work is all business, systematically weaving sisal through steel and terminating in a loose, limp knot. The suggestion of bondage is clear; whether that bondage would be pleasurable or painful, remains a question.

Like many contemporary sculptors, Chinn favors contrasting materials and textures, pairing steel with fiber, wood with iron, the hard with the soft, the smooth with the rough. But her works often subvert the stereotypical gender associations attached to these materials. While fiber is typically linked to ideas of the feminine, the soft, the healing, in Chinn's work, it might be a tight cinch or strap, suggesting distress or discomfort. Or, as in the case of "Composition Run Amok," a "masculine" metal such as iron can be made to appear warm, organic, and pregnant with life.

Each of these works is a beautifully composed whole. But there are tiny passages in these sculptures that seem to hold a universe of meaning. The juncture where soft felt meets cold lead; the moment when horsehair brushes gently against steel; the heartbeat rhythm of woven rope-these passages manifest the fragile strength of Chinn's sculpture.

Strength and fragility: another contradiction. Another question posed; another question unanswered. Chinn's works don't trade in neat resolutions and pat logic. Instead they meander in much richer, more engaging, and far more human territory."

Dr. Ivy Cooper
Chair, Art History Department
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville