Visual litanies, some linked, some not ; Exhibit examines how artists use their collections

"Bits + Pieces," a fascinating if uneven exhibit at the BostonCenter for the Arts Mills Gallery, examines the importance ofcollections in the lives of artists. The show, organized by curatorRebecca Rose Greene, raises many questions: How does a collectioninform art-making? What does a collection tell us about thecollector? And what constitutes a collection, anyway?

Jane Blood's piece, "[Expletive] Tooth" prompts that last one.Blood, we're told in the show's brochure, was a hoarder. As her homewas taken over by stuff, and as her health declined, she couldn'tleave her bedroom. This installation comprises hundreds of notes shewrote to herself, leafleting most of a wall. It's alarming to takeit all in. The references to missing teeth are in the dozens;indeed, the notes themselves begin to feel like stand-ins for hermissing teeth.

But to call this an artwork by Jane Blood seems misleading. Didshe intend to accumulate these notes and make an art installationwith them? Did she recognize what they conveyed about the humancondition, through her own agonies? Would she even have seen thenotes as meriting the label "collection"? More likely, someone elsesaw the notes and ascribed greater meaning to them, so althoughBlood is the author, she is not the artist. The artist is unnamed.

It takes intention to make a work of art. Billy Mavreas, whosepieces also depend on the accrual of stuff, brings an artist's eyeto the way he presents it. "Jars" is mounted on the wall, each jarfilled with something different: avocado seeds, balls, corks, andmore. They convey accumulation, even an underlying mania (whocollects moldy avocado seeds?). But Mavreas sorts them so we canread links from one to the next, and so apply meaning. His visuallitany of junk becomes a kind of poetry.

Isaac White's untitled installation of scores of his ownpaintings, drawings, and sculptures has a wonderful cumulativeeffect. His gestures, seen in many paintings of nudes, are brash andchoppy, his tones seething, and here they reverberate from one workto the next to create a space alive with his own visual syntax.Nancy Davies refers to age-old practices of gathering hair fromdead loved ones, in works made with her own hair - which shecollects. In "Between HOME and ELSEWHERE," Davies suspends bowl-shaped, hairy nests from the ceiling. They are sweetly ephemeral,romantic yet macabre.

"All My Dresses," Dana Sherwood's installation of hercollection of antique dresses, is almost a stage set: There's asewing machine, and suitcases, a wardrobe, and garments stacked andhanging everywhere. Yet it seems empty without an actor. Sherwoodnominally supplies one on the opposite wall in a digital slide show,"Inventory," in which a woman takes the same arch pose in severaldresses. But these dresses need a live model.

In another stage-set-like installation, Lissa Rivera creates theoffice of a fictional, turn-of-the-century sex researcher in"Incantations of a Doll Collector." The set is a mere backdrop forRivera's powerfully disturbing collection of videos culled from theInternet of people who like to dress up as dolls. One shows a womanin a swirly blue-and-white skirt with her hands tied behind her backand a noose around her neck. Yikes. Rivera's material is so charged,it's hard to integrate it into an art installation. She would havedone better to choose one video and dissect it, rather thanoverpower her audience with many.

Collections are great resources for artists, as "Bits + Pieces"demonstrates. It takes great craft and imagination to effectivelypackage them into works of art, and only some of these artists dothat successfully.

Using traces of history

Collecting and accretion play into shows by Hannah Verlin andJessica Straus at Boston Sculptors Gallery. Verlin collects tracesof history. Her works involved repetitive action, which accumulateinto thoughtful, ephemeral sculptures. For "Communion," sheimpressed the names from graves at the Old Burying Ground in HarvardSquare on scores of tiny pieces of edible paper. "Please Eat," readsthe label, and so I took the wee memorial to Ruth Dickson, whosedates were unclear, and ate it like a communion wafer.

Verlin loops through history, making palpable yet ethereal tiesbetween the living and the dead. "All Eyes Upon Us" features tinypaper boats on the floor, tethered to the ceiling. There's text onthe paper, white on white, impossible to read, but the title listalerts us that it's from John Winthrop's 1630 book "A Model ofChristian Charity," along with names and dates of 270 shipwrecksoff New England. The text in all Verlin's work reads like chantingor prayer, calling us to remember the dead, and to recall our ownmortality.

Straus utilizes old bottles dug up along Boston waterways, andforgotten in a basement before she came by them. Green-blue andcloudy, they already carry history. Straus fills them with carvedwood and mounts them in wooden frames. "Wish" features a bottleexpelling a snake-like form, which coils around the glass,threatening to squeeze, and "Pour" sports an arc of blue woodenballs dribbling from one bottle to another. Unfortunately, many ofStraus's wooden frames are simply contraptions, rather thancontributors to the art's metaphors.

Cate McQuaid can be reached at catemcquaid@gmail.com.

BITS + PIECES

At: Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 551 Tremont St.,through June 26. 617-426-8835, www.bcaonline.org

HANNAH VERLIN: Knowing Not Knowing

JESSICA STRAUS: Keep

At: Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave., through June 26.617-482-7781, www.bostonsculptors.com

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