family disaster

just dark evening on the mcmaster campus, all the little fine art freshmen are awake in their muffin-top jeans, dark winking creases of their november-tanned bums as they walk up the gallery stairs in front of me. they wear not-ironic trucker caps and have learned to paint using their faces as canvas. plus there are a few boys trying out serpico.

rochelle rubinstein greets us up there, long wavy hair half-way down her back, regal nose and cheeks like plums. her wrists clink with silver and gold. her skirt hem is uneven in an elphin way and colour.

she stands before her work all grouped up for a group show called 'unnatural disasters'. she had three offerings. one is a book of linocuts reworking, rewording a hebrew book of lamentations. it is more sophisticated than the image i found above (from her days at women's studio workshop in NY), but the message is similar: men are born into power and are worshipped until the crown slips; perhaps in a moment of violence.

another piece is a nine-dych of silken printed quilts, maybe one foot square each. they are texture memories of auschwitz and 911 and the tsunami and katrina.

with what regularity we hurt each other.

the last is a line up of silk and organza characters she calls the village. each is as tall and wide as a person. one is pregnant and one is hurling a grenade.