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Where:
The Candy Factory, 7th floor

When:
Through July 30. Call 523-7543 for information.

Joyce Gralak turns the discarded into art

by Heather Joyner

Artist Joyce Gralak has found her calling, and—Lo and Behold!—her medium is candle wax. Although refined beeswax is generally associated with art, waxes from other sources can be used. Whether derived from Brazilian palm leaves (Carnauba), Mexican weeds (Candelilla), Chinese insects, Indian sumac (Japan wax), or the head cavities of a sperm whale (the thankfully outmoded Spermaceti), the easily melted substance has been manipulated by artists since ancient Greece—if not before. As for Gralak, an accidental spattering of candle wax on paper became the impetus for mastering the medium that best serves her work. It certainly serves the idiosyncratic yet beautiful pieces currently on view at the Candy Factory.

As our Arts and Cultural Alliance's July Artist of the Month, Gralak has set up the show a mere stone's throw away from her KMA office. There, she works as exhibition coordinator and registrar, and despite the demands of her job—preparing gallery spaces, keeping records of art that comes and goes, etc.—she manages to find time for making a great many things. Gralak has assembled installations as well as mixed media pieces on wood board. Populated by a range of found objects often alluding to American suburbia, all works include wax—not used as it is in encaustic painting, but instead poured onto a substrate in layers. And Gralak's perpetual reconfiguration of her evolving set of "symbols" lends life to the seemingly inconsequential. It's no easy task, but she pulls it off.

What's harder to manage is a description of the unusual pieces Gralak creates, leading me to ask this: If one work of art is more difficult to describe than another, is it any less coherent or moving? However universal Gralak's quest to order visual elements, we're admitted into a somewhat private world when looking at what she's produced. My listing details of numerous works cannot convey their presence—and the intimacy experienced when we somehow feel part of the artist's intellectual and emotional process. But what if that process is driven by questioning and uncertainty? Can we accept that which is unresolved? As viewers of art, our own perceptions merge with the artist's intentions, and both artists and viewers benefit when they permit themselves to explore what they don't immediately understand.

Calling herself a "recovering Catholic," Gralak says that religious references are only one aspect of her art. But they're abundant and hard to dismiss. She remarks, "As a kid growing up near Chicago, I just couldn't reconcile [all that] sin and guilt. Babies are born with mortal sin...if you miss mass, you go to hell." As grave as her fear of eternal damnation might have been, it did not nip Gralak's wry sense of humor in the bud. For instance, one of her three-dimensional assemblages has milk bottles amusingly labeled "mortal sin" and "venial sin." Inspired by an illustration in a catechismal youth manual, Gralak's reworked visual instruction is both creepy and absurd. The bottle marked "venial sin" contains pale wax spotted by what looks like mold, whereas "mortal sin" brims with entirely dark wax. As very real doctrine turned onto itself, the construction can be linked to dada.

Other allusions to religion can be found in Gralak's installation titled "Tastes Like Chicken" (as is the show), and in smaller pieces incorporating milagros or biblical passages—their scale purportedly influenced by the fact that Gralak lived for years in a small house. "Tastes Like Chicken" possesses an altar of sorts partly obscured by hanging panels. Made from wispy black fabric, the panels feature performing bears in muzzles and a chained circus elephant. Also triplicated are bullet-hole-ridden figures on paper arranged as a kind of trinity above candles, dried flowers, and shaped wax resembling meat on a plate. When asked if she shot at the targets herself, Gralak explains that they were given to her as is—by security guard friends who've resumed shooting practice after the events of September 11. Combined with the drawings of captive animals, they project relentless victimization.

Gralak asserts that she first responds to items like the targets in a purely visual way, shifting her focus from the objects' purposes toward aspects of their appearance. Her artist's statement reads, "The images and objects in this work are chosen at a gut level; it is their juxtaposition that creates the subject among the elements....the use of different amounts of wax over or under an image/object can create varying levels of recognition—from painful clarity to almost complete obscurity—just as our memories and perspective can change reality."

As for painful clarity, Gralak also effectively addresses animal abuse issues. Regarding her frustration with cruel experimentation, Gralak says, "I don't want to be labeled an animal rights artist, [but] if that's what I'm thinking about, it's going to come out." Even roadkill (in the form of a desiccated snake) is acknowledged and resurrected. One particularly disturbing piece duplicates a sketch from a game cookbook showing the head of a deer being sawed off. Superimposed on a cutting board printed with the slightly obscured phrase "Come and Get It," the drawing is reminiscent of art by Kiki Smith. Rabbits appear frequently in Gralak's work, and their multiplicity brings to mind Smith's comment that "there's a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries." When asked about her work, Gralak remarks, "To answer in a simple way, I'm a collector. I see [certain things] and feel compelled to use them." And she allows herself sentiment without lapsing into sentimentality, redefining the most ordinary things so that they speak as well as shine.