Beverly Soasey: A nice visual touch that may be a touch too sweet

"A French Experience," a show of Beverly Soasey's little boxes at the Karin Clarke Gallery through Dec. 28, presents us with one of those vexing esthetic questions: Is her work merely sweet, or is it downright sticky? Is it nostalgic or maudlin? Where is the line that separates Soasey's sometimes fluffy creations from a million Victoriana shops suffocating in potpourri?

Certainly her materials pull her close to a dangerous edge. The old postcards, faded photographs, clock faces, doll parts and little silver spoons she uses to populate her wall boxes and freestanding creations are the stuff of a million bad antique displays.

Soasey accumulated the raw materials for this art on a recent trip to France, where she hung out at second-hand shops and the Paris flea market. She found old artists' supplies (funny how tubes of paint, if from France, can become art themselves), photographs, letters, postage stamps and even a little bird's nest. Then she came home and started assembling. The resulting work, framed behind glass in boxes just deep enough to be three-dimensional, owes a clear debt to 20th century American visionary artist Joseph Cornell, whose strange and magical little boxes helped define the genre of assemblage.

But Cornell's work was often dark and challenging; Soasey's tends to be upbeat and a little sweet, like a flavored latte, though it also includes a deep undercurrent of sadness at times. What elevates Soasey's work from the ordinary is its depth and complexity. These boxes of hers reward close viewing. The imagery, for example, often extends right off the back of the box and onto the insides of the frame, a subtle touch that invites a certain amount of head craning to enjoy.

Her assemblage is also extremely well designed. Soasey has a nearly perfect visual touch, which may account for the fact that her work has been selected by the jury for every Eugene Mayor's Art Show since 1992. The boxes are joined at the gallery by a handful of whimsical bird houses, which are basically smaller examples of her assemblage.

Dec. 1, 2002