University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: May 15, 2008

By CHARLES ANZALONE
Contributing Editor

The strip extending the length of both sides of the UB Anderson Gallery’s second-floor hallway is ½-inch wide and ¼-inch deep—so small that curator Gerald Mead has included magnifying glasses for observers to note detail.

This box of Buffalo memorabilia is one of 30 boxes filled with raw material to make collages that were once owned by local collector Marie MacKrell. It is part of "Continuum," artist Gerald Mead’s tribute to MacKrell currently on exhibit in the UB Anderson Gallery.

Its size is deceptive. That narrow strip winding its idiosyncratic way more than 200 feet across the Anderson hallway conveys a range of sometimes contradicting emotions. It’s haunting, sad, reassuring, whimsical, triumphant, lonely, communal, isolating and unifying, depressing and inspiring, all at once.

That’s remarkable energy for such a sliver of work. But if art is intended to connect its audience with a common experience, “Continuum,” the collage exhibit using the once-private materials of local collector Marie MacKrell, hits the mark time after time.

“Marie MacKrell was so extremely meticulous it was almost a compulsion,” says Mead, an award-winning collage/assemblage artist and former curator at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center whose Anderson Gallery show—and final UB master’s thesis—already has earned sweet reviews.

“The obsessive nature of the show speaks to the heart of all artists who collect, and also to the universal need to collect, sort and organize,” he says. “For Marie MacKrell, this was her attempt to make order out of chaos, to understand and perhaps exert a certain control over the deluge of visual materials we are confronted with every day.”

Of all the features that evoke emotions, the show’s genesis is among the most memorable. Five years ago, Mead got a phone call from MacKrell, a local photographer and collage artist in her mid-90s. They had never met, but she told him she was familiar with his collage work, an understatement that Mead now sees as a profound gesture of trust. MacKrell had painstakingly compiled 30 carefully sorted, 16-by-20-inch photo boxes filled with about 4,000 clippings—“ephemera” as artists call the materials because they are not intended to be saved. The thousands of clippings were her raw materials to make collages. Each box was sorted according to 30 categories, and the aging paper materials inside almost without exception were in exquisite condition.

Mead told her he would get back to her.

“You had better hurry,” she told him, calmly but firmly.

“She was 95, never had children,” says Mead. “And I think she wanted to get her affairs in order.”

Three weeks later, she was dead, passing quietly in her Beard Avenue home where she had lived alone for 23 years since her husband’s death in 1980. An investment counselor found her in her home several days after she had died.

So instead of lying undiscovered with the rest of her household possessions, MacKrell’s meticulous collection of collage materials was saved. Mead moved the boxes to his home studio and set out to create an exhibit that testified to her skill as a collage artist, as well as her heart and spirit.

The ½-inch strip spanning the length of the gallery hallway is divided into 7-foot-long sections, each showing a thin slice of the contents of the 30 photo boxes. Mead took a small sample of the contents and used it to create his 207-foot strip. “She was a collage artist,” he says of his decision to take a small section of the contents in each box. “She intended these materials to be used.”

Visitors slowly walking by the strip will see a small cross-section of each box (Mead repeats the images for continuity), changing boxes every 7 feet. Magnifying glasses are mounted at the transitions. The “Children” section, for example, evolves into “Clocks/Legs/Hands/Feet” and then becomes “Clowns” until all 30 boxes are accounted for.

Anyone looking closely will spot the extra layer of detail Mead brought to his project. The strips are actually the top section of 20 layers of material. Mead wanted to simulate the thickness of the material as it really is in the 30 boxes.

“The top layer of the strip shows the range of the material in her collection,” Mead says. “The depth shows the literal depth of the material. I don’t really mind if someone comes up and touches it.”

The hands-on nature of the show continues in the entrance to the exhibit. One box—a different one each day—is open and on display. Visitors are encouraged to sift through the materials. Adjacent to this is what Mead calls a “cabinet of curiosity,” a collector’s device showing the smallest, oldest and heaviest samples in the MacKrell collection.

“Continuum” also includes a wide sample of collages, including some by MacKrell. Mead also has issued a limited number of “examination certificates” free to visitors.

Mead is no stranger to the collecting instinct. He was one of 11 children, and his mother spent a life’s work collecting report cards, letters, honor certificates, cards, artwork, notes—anything she had been given from her children. When their mother died, each of the Mead children got his or her own box with the documents of their lives.

MacKrell had no children, but her drive to collect and note the events surrounding her was similar to what Mead’s mother did. It was an “obsession,” but Mead says it with the admiration of a collector.

“The important step wasn’t that she did this, but that she didn’t want to pass away and then have no one see it,” he says. “These archives became part of her purpose. It also became and is her legacy.”

The exhibit continues at the Anderson Gallery until June 1.

Mead will present a hand-on workshop, “The Art of Collage,” from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday and an educators workshop from 6-9 p.m. on Wednesday. Both workshops will be in the Anderson Gallery, 1 Martha Jackson Place, Buffalo.