Tell me a story

We’re going to play a little game. I say a word, you say the first thing that comes to mind. Are you ready?

Pennies? “Lucky.” Doorway? “Bathroom.”

Nothing too strange there. Let’s try some more.

Cufflinks? “Handcuffs.” (Interesting …) Offshore accounts? “Pagans.” Google? “Boring.” Alphabet? “Four-letter word.” (Hmmm …) Ceramics? “Transcendence.” Story? “Chico.”

Wow. Your unexpected answers indicate an intriguing intelligence. Either that, or you’ve just gone to the 1078 Gallery to view the current group exhibit, Stories 1. Such is the fun of a group art show juxtaposing five past and present Chico artists from diverse backgrounds working in equally diverse media. Enter the concrete-floored space and you will experience everything from paintings to photographs, illustrations to ceramics; the documentation of the randomness of pennies or falling strips of paper; and all of it underlined by statements provided by each artist. Taken all together, one thing leading to another, a story emerges.

The story could begin with one of three of Ellen Akimoto’s paintings, “Doorway to the Bathroom,” which focuses equally on the two figures facing the viewer as it does the open bathroom. The man, like the shower tub in the distance, is half-exposed, shirt pulled to the side. The woman to his right has her interest pulled elsewhere. According to Akimoto, “A tiny room, out of the way of the structure and discussion and sweeping current of the main, fills somehow more quickly with artificial lighting. It fills with the excess of images and the fragments of thought.”

Speaking of fragments, Brad Thiele revels in them. “Collect” is composed of found “art,” discarded phone numbers collected from the street and arranged “in chance order.” For “the world’s most boring square,” Thiele searched Google with the term “boring” (as in drilling) and arranged 24 of the results randomly. Thiele’s seeks out a “… mutability in language and the familiar—the ways in which a thing shifts, twists and turns despite our best efforts for clarity—and play to this non-fixity by reformatting the both through modest interventions between signs, objects, activities and ideas.”

Trevor Lalaguna plays to this idea of “non-fixity” by becoming, well, more fixed. For “Cufflinks (12 Hour House Arrest),” he fashioned a pair of handcuffs from steel, foam and fabric. Donning these cuffs, he then documented a 12-hour period of time of him in his home, doing what one does at home. Drinking a beer, unlocking a gate with a broom, sitting at times with a cat or a dog, peeing. “My work [has] changed from creating little figures to actually working off my own figure by developing wearable apparatuses that challenge my ideas and physicality.”

Initially, Haley Hughes did not want her physicality challenged. “When I first started painting,” she relates, “I rejected constraint in all forms and always chose action over technique.” Now, however, she favors “… precognition, control and execution.” Some of her bright, almost fluorescent acrylic and gouache works are of familiar Chico scenes: One-Mile at Bidwell Park, and the yearly theater production known as “The Butcher Shop.” Others, like “Offshore Accounts for Pagans,” focus on, as she put it, “power, sexuality, war and politics in what I like to call a mythology for contemporary society.”

Sienna Orlando’s ceramic works find inspiration not from society but from the natural world. “My fantasy plays with these perfections, melding a series of forms that have skipped a long and timely evolution, and have instead gestated rapidly and mutated in my dusty laboratory.” “The Pact” is one such piece, the smooth exterior of one of the telescoping pods revealing within its belly a litter of similar, though much smaller, creatures. Five other vase-like orbs strut along a shelf, each one different, each one exuding natural shapes or fractal patterns. “The orb lays the pages for my curious stories while maintaining an innate sense of recognition for the viewer.”

This group show doesn’t provide a traditional narrative in theme or style. But if you enjoy the puzzle of finding connections in disparate objects, Stories 1 will meet the challenge.