Introspective Accretions

Sedge, Redbud, and Fern -
The Indigenous Baskets of the Yokuts, Mono and Miwok Peoples
from the Museum's Caroline E. Harris Collection of California Indian Baskets

Introspective Accretions: The Collages of Maritta Tapanainen

When:  Fri. Sept. 12 – Sun., Nov. 2, 2008
Where: Hallowell Gallery
Conversation with the Artist: Fri., Sept. 12, 3:00 pm

I was born in Finland, raised in Canada and have since lived in Europe, Central America and in the harsh, expansive beauty of the Mojave Desert. I travel when possible – journeys to South East Asia, Cuba, Japan and most recently to Sri Lanka. These encounters have infused an awareness and respect for a variety of cultural experiences and have contributed to my approach to collage.

Expansive environments of fluid, tenuous collaborations explode in proliferation. Sculpturesque totems, columnar remains, hypnotic concentric rings, small spheroidal bodies, dense openings, diagrammatic cross-sections, globules, webs, coils, cocoons, pelts, anatomical reformations, seed and floral clusters, enigmatic devices, odd industrial scrap-converge with verdant urgency in a semblance of landscape. Objects and organisms suggestive without being specific, specific without being revealing-mesh with snatches of memory and meditations on the micro-macro cosmos-familiar yet strange, inviting recognition while remaining enigmatic and open to interpretation. The evolving cacophony spews, molts, spurts, oozes, spawns, bursts, ignites, sprouts in primordial metamorphosis. They are not still. Here harmony and disruption prevail. Woven counter mechanisms-control and abandon, precision and randomness, becoming and surrender-juxtapose in poetic continuation. The choice of aged, worn source paper imbues the work with a sense of history and a detached timelessness.
                                                                         - Maritta Tapanainen


With good fortune we have been able to gather fifteen of Maritta Tapanainen’s amazing collages for this current exhibition now displayed in the Hallowell Gallery that also features a select group of indigenous baskets from the Museum’s Caroline E. Harris Collection of Indian Baskets. Related by the elegance of subdued soft tans, the colors of the Tapanainen collages, and that of the natural grasses, sedge, redbud and fern used by the Yokuts, Mono and Miwok basketmakers, a harmony of complex form emerges combined by the recognition of the unity of all things when viewed through the lens of an artist’s discriminating eye.

The diversity of forms, the different seeds, roots, bulbs, insects, fish gathered in baskets seems to merge in the curiosity of Maritta Tapanainen’s biomorphic abstract images that seem to twist, turn, float, connect, separate, and crowd on the flat picture planes of layered surfaces in these recent collages. Here a chaotic world of shapes and unrelated forms come together in a tightly composed fantasy of evolving life of meticulous details. Just as in the woven baskets, these collages are built by an intuitive process that finds its way to a universal order of great beauty enhanced by the muted shades of umber.

Maritta Tapanainen’s collages are painstakingly constructed with cutout scientific and technical textbook illustrations superimposed on a background layer of cut paper. Like a biomorphic jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces fit neatly together with such compositional ease that the imagery flows smoothly. Tapanainen’s tools and materials are simple – books, X-acto knife, archival wheat paste and rag board. Just as the California Indians used the awl in the making of the coiled or string basketry from growing plants using bundles of grass stems from the foothills, the inner roots of sedge, split redbud and the inner rhizome of braken fern – out of the simplicity of tools and materials a complex unified basket form materialized much as the Tapanainen collages emerged.

We are indebted to both the Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York and the Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles for loaning works for this exhibition and for their assistance in making this exhibition possible. Collectors of Maritta Tapanainen’s work whose belief in the importance of the artist’s work were most gracious in sharing their artworks for this exhibition – New York collectors Richard Harris, Susan Borowitz, and Dan Collin and Los Angeles collectors Miriam Wosk and Darrel Couturier are recognized for their kindness in sharing Tapanainen’s art works from their private collections.