Amendment XXIX Right To Privacy
Canal Street Gallery • Bellows Falls, VT • canalstreetartgallery.com • Through December 10, 2022
These times try people’s souls. Michael Noyes, co-founder of Canal Street Gallery, curates an antidote to this intrusion by highlighting privacy in The Amendment XXIX Right to Privacy, featuring regional artists, including Clare Adams, Nancy Fitz-Rapalje, Corinne Greenhalgh, Yevette Hendler, Roxy Rubell, and Jeanette Staley.
Noyes feels “the ‘implied’ right to privacy in the Constitution relied upon by the Supreme Court for nearly 50 years is not enough. A new Amendment must be proposed to define the American citizen’s right to privacy, and to protect these rights.” He believes that an individual’s privacy is enshrined. In response, Adams venerates Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in a rectangular portrait of colored glass. Justice Ginsberg faces us center stage as an icon, set in crimson, cloaked in black, and surrounded by a blue and white border. This hagiography makes sense as stained glass evokes religious tradition. Who better to idolize than Ginsberg.
Playing up to the Kafka-esque cyber invasion of our lives with ironic wit is Hendler’s There’s No Place Like Home. Hendler quips that all this prying into people’s homes is enough to “motivate [us] to dwell in a remote cave.” She created a self-portrait of herself crouched in a rocky space, clasping her ears. An ominous light flashes upon her face, saying—“We got you!”
Some artists defend women’s freedoms. Fitz-Rapalje painted a line of women a la “The Handmaid’s Tale.” They solemnly stand in A Grievous Disregard, Violated Virgins Carrying Unwanted Children. As she explains, “it calls to mind one of the ways Dobbs v. Jackson infringes on a woman’s elemental privacy.” The Biblical pall over these costumes, and the reference to virgins, emphasizes the implications of governmental misogyny. Joining in the solidarity of guerilla artists like Chicago, Kruger, and Ringgold is Greenhalgh’s embroidered linen. Green-halgh sews text into kerchiefs—transforming traditional women’s objects into powerful talismans. Her piece Get It In Your Head Women Are Not Going Back To The Nineteen Fifties, exemplifies the general tenor of the show.
Staley’s American Red Fox, 2022 at 20 x 30″ offers an appropriate conclusion. This collage of an Audubon fox and Chinese motifs alludes to things being trapped. Yet the fox is snapping back, as must we all.
—Bret Chenkin