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MFA reinstates women's art prize

Museum And Gallery

Your tax dollars at work

Other works are less creepy. Andrew Mobray of South Boston cuts up men’s trousers and stitches the pieces together to create what his artist statement calls “absurdly phallic” dust covers for fishing reels. The shapes are alluringly new and curious while retaining sensations of their original use. And he tickles the divide between men’s things (fishing) and women’s things (sewing). So it’s too bad it boils down to a stale fishing-rod-equals-penis gag. Somerville artist Greg Mencoff’s abstract wood sculptures are so subtly smoothed and polished that they could have fallen off some alien spacecraft. Sachiko Akiyama of Brookline aims to “describe the deeply private and mysterious psyche of the individual” with her tiny wooden heads and figures. The psyches of these carefully carved people are all apparently gloomy and blank.

So did I get my money’s worth? This isn’t the sort of government-funded art rife with smut, perversion, and blasphemy that sparks legislative hearings — unfortunately. There are pleasures to be had in these mild funhouse jolts and shocks, but what the artists talk about and how they say it won’t keep you or your state rep up at night.

In February, while wandering through some crummy hallway at Boston University, I happened upon a student’s paintings of strange glassy-eyed ladies with tables full of cookies, tarts, and cakes. In one, a skinny pretty brunette sat behind a table in an exceedingly empty room holding a candy apple. On the table stood a strawberry-topped layer cake. The woman gazed thoughtfully into the distance. Everything was a bit stretched and warped, as if seen too closely through a wide-angle lens. Something weird and intriguing was going on here that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I jotted down the artist’s name — Shira Avidor — and later e-mailed the school but got no response. Then I got busy and forgot about the paintings, but every once in a while I remembered them and told myself I had to track down this Avidor.

Then a couple of weeks ago I happened into the Alpha Gallery on Newbury Street just before the opening of “New Talent,” the gallery’s June show featuring four recent MFA grads, and there hung Avidor’s paintings. The 32-year-old artist herself walked in soon after. Born in Brookline, she lived in Israel from age three until returning for grad school at BU. She invents scenes incorporating models and pastries she buys at supermarkets, which to her symbolize America’s overwhelming Technicolor abundance. “It’s such a wealthy, overfed society,” Avidor said when I called a few days later, “but the archetype of beauty is being extremely thin.”