Art Review : ‘Family Album’ Records Mundane, Trivial

We all have beliefs, emotions and personal stories of struggle, misunderstandings, failures and successes. But very few of us are able to transmute this material into works of art that resonate beyond ourselves and the particulars of our lives.

The biggest problem with “Family Album,” a group of installations and videos at the Cal State Fullerton Main Art Gallery (through Oct. 9), is that most of the artists seem content to present the raw data of personal experience without benefit of fresh metaphor, allusion, irony or wit. A drearily earnest air hangs over the project--curated by Cal State Northridge art faculty member Betty Ann Brown--which effectively kills its spirit and withers its good intentions.

Even the broad scope of the show is a liability. With work by 31 artists about such disparate subjects as the strains of second-generation ethnicity, non-traditional family units, childbirth, women’s roles and familial dysfunction of various kinds, the net effect is rambling and diffuse rather than comprehensive.

The bad news starts at the entryway to the gallery, where doormats collected from Fullerton residents by Kathy Haddad and Jerry Mosher display the usual kitschy, upbeat imagery (houses, flowers, bears), with a few jokey dissenters (one mat says “Go Away”).

But the artists don’t seem to have any particular thoughts about this stuff. They’ve assembled their raw data and have offered it without point of view or analysis. C’mon guys, this project may make for pleasant community relations, but it’s not a piece .

In many cases, the stumbling block seems to be lack of craft and awareness of when a particular genre or style has outworn its welcome.

Where an artist such as Karen Finley (who is not in this show, alas) has evoked gut-wrenching feelings with rhythmic text scribbled on a wall, Rosalie Ortega’s wall text in “Forgiveness” mainly evokes annoyance at her cliched writing.

The altar-like piece, bedecked with rose petals (a hackneyed format by now), is about coming to terms with having been abandoned as an infant by her young, abused mother. Ortega’s inept approach makes it hard to care, or even to pay attention.

Similarly, Lynn Kubasek’s shirts made of plastic and such household-related items as supermarket coupons and recipes are too close to their already cliched subject (woman as household drudge) to offer an original perspective. Oddly, even when Kubasek hits on a more metaphoric format (a shirt that has “grown” branch-like additional sleeves), she undercuts it with the ponderously literal addition of inscribed daily chores and habits.

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Conversely, some pieces in the show sacrifice deeper meaning to the exigencies of craft. Katherine Ng’s typographical and design skills are attractively in evidence in “Fortune Ate Me,” a box of three-dimensional paper fortune cookies with an accompanying slide sequence. But the piece, like Ng’s “My Name is Not My Own,” seems to coast on the surface of issues of identity and relationship to one’s immigrant forebears.

Other works don’t seem to be about anything in particular (Bernice Colman’s collages) or are too secretive to let us in (Diane Holland’s baffling “Somatic Telesthesia” series).

Finally, there are pieces that offer mainly reportage (a videotape of Georgia Anne Middlebrook talking with her son Willie about what it’s like to be black and gay) or swallow up a good concept with too much repetitive documentation (Cheri Gaulke and Sue Maberry’s “Thicker Than Blood: Portrait of Our Lesbian Family,” with its central conceit of having lesbian couples immortalize themselves a la Middle America by photographers at Sears).

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The video portion of the show--curated by Meg Linton, co-owner of the Griffin Gallery in Costa Mesa--unfortunately offers little relief. Too many of the artists seem to believe that old home movies provide such fascinating data and intrinsic appeal that they will work as straight visual “background” for virtually any voice-over with a family theme. There is too much boring babble (personal or sociological) and little wit or originality.

One of the few exceptions is Wallace Schultz’s “Oh! Brother!” Using a combination of family snapshots, computer animations, re-enactments and symbolic images, Schultz probes his varying reactions to his older, gay brother throughout their often harrowing life. This excellent piece is honest and often shockingly revelatory without losing a sharp, self-aware edge.

In keeping with the artlessly autobiographical tone of the show, an accompanying limited edition artists’ book contains a grab bag of personal stories, snapshots, drawings and poems by the artists and several other contributors. (By far the best piece, Buzz Spector’s essay “Some Family Photographs” neatly reverses the usual expectations by giving us a sharply focused running commentary and letting us imagine the accompanying snapshots spanning 28 years of his life.)

The book also contains Brown’s curatorial statement in which she explains that the show was conceived as a response to the Republican Party’s emphasis on traditional “family values” during the 1992 presidential election campaign.

Wishing to make a case for the legitimacy of non-traditional families is a laudable aim. But the best art is multivalent and open-ended. It resists being reduced to sloganeering or waving the flag for any particular cause. By choosing works that tend to be either uncommunicative or hackneyed and one-dimensional, Brown has weakened seriously the potential impact of the show.

* “Family Album” continues through Oct. 9 at the Cal State Fullerton Main Art Gallery, State College Boulevard (north of Nutwood Avenue). New fall hours: Noon to 4 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday; 3 to 7 p.m. Wednesday; 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday (closed Friday and Saturday). Admission: free. As part of his piece, Michael Lewis Miller invites the public to a buffet pot luck “reunion dinner”--bring a covered dish--Oct. 9 from 2 to 5 p.m. (714) 773-3262.