ART REVIEW : ‘Siege’ Captures McMillen’s Magic

Michael McMillen’s installation, “Siege,” may be about the L.A. riots, strife in the former Yugoslavia or any of the other two dozen or so wars said to be currently defacing the planet. On view at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, the work takes up the entire Williamson Gallery, which appears somewhat larger than a tennis court.

In a town full of underrated artists, McMillen should be placed first in line as deserving more appreciation. He’s managed to extend the tradition of Assemblage into the realm of movie special effects. When he’s not making art, he fashions miniatures for the studios. Usually, his own haunting work is in that scale but he’s already proved that, if anything, he’s even better full size. The philosopher’s garage he concocted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a few years back still lingers in fond memory.

The current piece is first glimpsed from a corridor through a rectangular opening. At one end of the space is a lean-to wall constructed from rectangles of corrugated sheet metal. At the far end stands a kind of kids’ fort made of battered trash cans, a big net and other detritus. The floor is littered with what at first appears to be rather nasty, little round cannon balls.

The entrance to the piece is around the corner where a sign advises viewers they may be subject to sudden loud noises. Gallery director Stephen Nowlin had it placed there. He invited McMillen to do a work of his own choosing, but didn’t want anyone to be too startled.

Pass through a battered, squeaking screen door and you are behind the leaning wall in what feels like a dark attic room under the eaves. The sound of water gurgling through pipes brings a curious aura of natural calm. The place is full of the usual beloved junk people can’t quite throw away--old trunks, pots, steel mesh and whatnot, which McMillen somehow invests with the mystery of really good abstract sculpture. Partly that’s due to his knack for finding objects whose original purpose is beyond guessing. What is that metal doodad that looks like an archaic UFO?

Before one quite has time to take this all in, one is indeed startled, if not scared witless, by the sharp, reverberating thwack of something hitting the corrugated wall--and hard. Locate a reverse-telescope peephole and you see yourself fired upon from the garbage-can fort. Good grief. If it’s those nasty little cannon balls, one could be maimed or killed.

One learns with relief that the projectiles are tennis balls painted pitch black and launched from a device normally used to simulate a really vigorous serve. Whew.

When the barrage ends, one has time to notice the real core of the attic room. An ancient desk is illuminated by a reading lamp that picks objects out of the gloom--a typewriter and radio that look like survivors of the Crimean War, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The desk chair virtually invites you to sit down and have a good think, write your memoirs or tune into programs from Marconi’s day.

“Siege” can legitimately be read as alluding to local or global unrest, but it has other faces. There is a playfulness about cannon balls being tennis balls. There is magic in every square foot of McMillen’s room. You keep noticing new things, like a forest of dolls arms hanging high up in the eaves or an illuminated box that looks like one of the artist’s miniatures. There is the consoling serenity about the whole interior.

Maybe McMillen is saying something about our need to be alone with our thoughts in order to grow and be creative. Maybe the essentially harmless barrage is about all the things in life that frighten and distract us when there is really nothing to worry about.

McMillen is no Pollyanna. There is a small piece on view that shows a tiny steam engine lowering a book into a bucket. He’s as worried as the rest of us about the way culture is being trashed these days.

But he’s far deeper than artists who merely “comment” on events. He takes the tricks of show business and turns them into a virtual reality that has the evocative density of a book you want to read more that once. Perhaps all that needs to be said about McMillen’s work is that it’s hard to leave without promising yourself you’ll come again.

Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena, through Sept. 26, (818) 584-5144. Closed Mondays.