Clouds & Cupcakes: Part 2
Jenny Dowd
Clouds & Cupcakes opened this past week at Mystery Print Gallery and Frame in Pinedale, WY. I was so excited about the show that I completely forgot to take any photos - so thank you to everyone who photographed the work and posted it on Facebook! Now I have another excuse to travel back to the gallery and see the work… next time I’ll remember to photograph it.
In my last post, Clouds & Cupcakes: Part 1, I showed some process behind my work for the show. Here, all the work by Shannon Troxler, Matt Daly, and Connie Wieneke come together and for sweet and cloudy conversations.
I turned the window into a bake shop, plus covered another gallery table with porcelain sweets - cakes, petit fours, cherries, and fortune cookies. Scattered in are a few small paintings of sweets and clouds by Shannon.
Shannon captured the fleeting nature of clouds with oils, which also look as if they will change any second.
Matt projected cloud fortunes onto layers of silk hanging in the middle of the space, the projected words and light passing through the layers and onto the walls with cloud-like ripples. The fortunes are the type he imagines clouds would receive if they went out to dinner together and received fortune cookies at the end of the meal.
As a bonus, the light caused extra shadows in the cloud studies that hang below.
Connie wrote a cloud ephemeris, inspired by the human need to pin things down, and to feel like we know what will happen - despite the nature of the ephemeral.
At the end of the gallery I hung a bulletin board with little drawings of photos of memories of clouds. More cloud studies in shadow boxes hang next to Shannon’s oil paintings of clouds - these float off the wall just above a silver leaf background.
The fortune cookies do contain fortunes - though most will have to be broken in order to be read. I see this as potential. A fortune cookie holds many possibilities, in this case, perhaps they will sit and wait, to be opened and read at just the right time.
I’ll be back to take more photographs soon. And the show is on display until November 1. Check it out if you are in the area, gallery details can be found at the Facebook page for Mystery Print Gallery & Frame
