You Are Full of Magic

By Danielle Rante

Through October 5

Hartnett Gallery, Wilson Commons, University of Rochester River Campus

275-4188, sa.rochester.edu/hartnett/

Tuesday-Friday 11 a.m.-7 p.m., Saturday-Sunday noon-5 p.m.

Danielle Rante's installation at the three-sided Hartnett Gallery is not mind-blowingly dramatic; it does not holler at you from across the room. What is does do is quietly beckon you closer for a more thorough look. And then she blinds you with science. The patterns and forms seen from a distance break apart into countless tiny components, all working together in a kaleidoscopic way. Her art is subtle and delicate, a quiet and whimsical combination of 2D work and paper sculpture, related by repetition in form and theme.

The non-intrusive nature of the mixed-media works on paper has an Eastern aesthetic; Rante does not plan the pieces, but works in an intuitive, trusting, wabi-sabi fashion and mingles finely penciled organic imagery with abstract patterned designs. Pencil work, a bit of colorful ink, and ridiculously meticulous cut paper mingle for a result that is clean, spare, and meandering. The detailed minutiae calls you closer, the pages pinned to the wall tremble and float out to meet you, responding to the breeze of your approach and your breath, and shivering shadows and silhouettes of lacelike ferns dance about on the wall. Below one piece is a series of dot-rings, penciled directly onto the wall and resembling speakers. In some cases, it's hard to differentiate between shadows, holes, and actual markings.

At times, the miniature worlds remind me of what you'd see under a microscope. Solid masses seen at a distance become swirling particles when viewed up close. Some of the 2D pieces smack of graphic t-shirts from hip indie designers, others resemble Rorschach tests, as random ink splotches mingle with penciled dots and the tedious cut-outs. This idea had me trying to divine some picture out of the abstracts. From across the room, I see the head of a Doberman with robin's egg blue eyes scowling intently at me, peering angrily from surrounding foliage. Up close, the down-turned mouth becomes a hand-printed declaration, also the title of the show: "YOU ARE FULL OF MAGIC."

With a smirk, my skeptic mind applies this statement to the miracle of particles, and gravity on the atomic level holding us all together...because, in a sense, existence and order seem so very unlikely, and really, really cool. Lately I'm fixated on microcosmic/macrocosmic patterns, the expression of molecules, almost inconceivable parts of the whole. Maybe it's because I'm spending a lot of time with a scientist lately...but then, that's another miracle: the tremendous effect that the people we adore have on the way we see the world. At our best, our interactions cause our impressions of things to expand and swell, and the world does seem magical.

An impossibly intricate fishing net of cut paper lies neatly on the floor, folded and blanket-sized, and tempts you to pick it up and tug at it, make the woven "strands" strain against one another as they pull. The delicate piece only seems woven at first glance; a careful examination reveals that it's really a solid sheet of paper, cut so finely as to look like woven cord.

A vertical chain of small pages is hung low on the wall, bearing no markings save rice grain-sized and -shaped cut outs in meticulous patterning, the points of which lead your eyes in spirals and floral bursts.

In the far back corner of the gallery, draped from the ceiling, is a grouping of lacey cut paper streamers, flowing to the floor and pooling in a few places. With a closer look, viewers realize how the strips once fit together; they were cut from the same paper. This made me wonder where all the rice-grain cut outs from other works went...

I wonder what games inspired the patterns? On one wall, a page is covered with rings within rings of penciled dots, resembling a cross-section of a tree, or a dartboard. At random, some of the dots are smudged, as if holes from a game of darts. My companion commented that the smudges "are really what make this, because otherwise, it's too perfectly geometric. The imperfections draw your attention."

Rante's work has a recurring theme of containment and order, seen most clearly from a distance, like patchwork land from a plane. But up close, chaos reigns, and it's hard to recall the boundaries and the patterns. From the concepts and images that catch her attention artistically, I can easily see her moving through the world like Alice, a wandering, childlike sense of wonder maintained as she majors in physics or botany at Wonderland U.

Science seeks to replace all of the mysteries of our existence with certainty, and we are hungry for it. But if we get to the home plate, what magic will the universe hold for us then? Will it be to us as a too-well-known lover? Or will the perfection of its complex inner workings captivate and baffle us in ways that we cannot anticipate? One of my favorite works on paper, covered in penciled bacteria-esque oblong forms, resembled what a drawing of mapped water currents would look like, with swirling eddies in unpredictable patterns. My date sighed, "The motion is almost unknowable." Yeah. Yet, still.