I love Michelle McAuliffe, better known as MUCK. Not just because she’s my long-lost fake sister*, a cooler, hotter version of me but also because she creates gorgeous, thought-provoking work.  I had the privilege of visiting her studio and viewing Muck’s most recent body of work, When The Horse Is Dead, Get Off, created as a part of her thesis for the MFA program at George Washington University.

Can You Read my ABCs? reminds me of painter Chuck Close’s recent beautifully photographed portraits, although he doesn’t display related works in a grid.

“Lip-reading is difficult.  By not assembling these photographs in alphabetical order, I’m trying to help the audience get a sense of what it is like to be a deaf person, depending on lip-reading for communication,” said Muck.

The photos in this work are overlaid with a film of tissue.  This filmy veil gives the viewer a sense of separation, obscuring the ABCs.  You think you know what you’re looking at but you aren’t quite sure.  You can fill in the blanks because you see the unobstructed parts of the face but the whole face is not fully visible.  Much like lip-reading, where you think you know what they’re talking about and you’re following along, filling in the blanks through context.

Thin Edges is a series of color photographs arranged on a grid, somewhat like the ABCs piece.The piece is composed of halves of different photos being sewn back together with golden thread, some with neat rows, others a tangled magpie’s nest.

“I can’t leave a photograph naked!  I need to add to it,” exclaimed Muck.

These photographs have intense color and are of things objects, settings, and locations that fascinated Muck at some point.  She says, “This is my attempt to preserve a moment, a precise time and place, and the attached memory.”  When asked about the intense, vivid color in the photographs, Muck said, “Color is important to me.  It is my sound.”

As I looked at the wall of photographs, that been cut in half and then sewn back together, I thought about the phenomenon experienced by many deaf people who are from hearing families or in a field where they don’t work with other deaf people. 

“Everyday, I’m always in two places,” said Muck.

Muck’s work captures that feeling of discombulation and is a reflection of how many of us make our way through the world, and in the end, cobble together a world of our own making that isn’t exactly a choice between the deaf community and the hearing world but a co-existence, a meditation of identity and language at the border to make something wholly new and unique—two worlds combined.

Traditional feminist art rejected craft, but this piece incorporates and celebrates traditional craft.  Some critics would call Muck a post-feminist artist but Muck herself resists theory and labels.  “It’s all bullshit,” she says. 

You’ll find that bullshit is a running theme in Muck’s work but the “Bullshit” piece is something you’ll have to find on your own at her opening on Tuesday.

The contrast between perfect and imperfect, destroyed and reassembled, the highbrow and the base is a tension that resonates throughout Muck’s body of work.  This is unexpected tension, and feels like seeing a beautiful innocent little girl with blonde curls bust out screaming profanities, such as in The Exorcist.  You jump back a little, somewhat repulsed, but the scene, idea and images compel you to stay and look a little longer.

*When we were in college, people would often confuse the two of us because we looked so alike. At one point, people thought we were twins. Tragically, that doesn’t really happen anymore. Maybe if I lost some weight…

The show:

Michelle McAuliffe
When The Horse Is Dead, Get Off
MFA Solo Thesis Exhibition
April 1-April 4

Artist’s Reception:
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
5:00pm - 7:00pm

The Dimock Gallery at The George Washington University
(Lisner Auditorium, Lower Lobby)

730 21st Street NW (21st and H Street)
Washington, DC

Gallery Hours:
Monday-Friday 11am-3pm