In Monica Youn’s poem “Parable of the Magpie and the Mirror” (2021), the eponymous Magpie willingly submits to placement in a cage by Scientist, who seeks to determine if the bird is self-aware and, therefore, his equal. Will Magpie recognize itself in a mirror? Yes, Magpie does. Magpie, seeking to demonstrate its worth, initially submits to these strictures and tests, but finally rebels when marked with a yellow sticker as a measure of self-awareness. Magpie rips the sticker off, demanding recognition of equality and freedom. Scientist stipulates that while Magpie has indeed proven its self-awareness and therefore equality, “because you are an equal, you must be marked with a yellow sticker in order to leave this cage”. Like Youn’s text, Patty B. Driscoll’s complex works of art engage questions of identity, self-awareness, and equity. In this exhibition, the artist ranges across media to address belonging, acknowledgement, tradition, violence, and rebellion through painstakingly detailed objects. Some are designed to endure while others beguilingly convey that permanence is elusive and that all is not what it seems.
Demonstrating this illusory quality, the image that opens this catalogue, Magpie, may, at first glance, appear to be an example of an enlarged nineteenth-century photograph. It is, however, an unretouched self-portrait of Driscoll, taken with her cellphone, looking into a ruined mirror in her Birmingham home, days after it was destroyed by fire. The image presents a haunting, Southern-gothic glimpse into both past – evoking the sense of longue durée security and the promise of stability that the physical remnants of multi-generational family history can elicit – and, with a seemingly futile Windex bottle and paper towels at her side, an uncertain but hopeful future with promises of reclamation. As the photograph suggests, slippages between reality and fiction in Driscoll’s works can destabilize viewer perceptions. If the towering form of Pièce Montée seems instantly recognizable, not just by sight but also by smell, drawing viewers close for a tantalizing whiff of the sugary goodness that surely lies beneath a chinoiserie veneer of fondant, we must beware. Driscoll’s early training as a pastry chef is indeed at play, but first impressions may deceive. Here the ephemeral French wedding treat is made permanent; there is no moist, edible center, but a styrofoam core. Cahaba Bride, too, seems to still time, preserving a delicate bloom within a glass cloche.
These works bespeak traditions and milestones, beginnings and endings, challenging the viewer to look deeply, to examine critically. They draw us into Driscoll’s world, one grounded in the artist’s deep-seated southern roots, interest in women’s access and spaces, concerns with gendered representations (and misrepresentations), and a desire to reclaim historical processes.
A series of door-knockers – conjuring visions of home, yes, but more deeply, as Driscoll notes, eminent arrivals, solidity, security, and resounding tenacity – pay homage to contemporary and historic women identified with one or more of those qualities. Each begins with a carefully carved clay model that is, through the age-old and collaborative lost-wax method, transformed into functional sculpture. All are cast in unlacquered brass that will patina with age. The first in the series was Marguerite, a parrot form inspired by an object in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. There, a gilded bird resides in the reconstructed bedroom of the milliner and couturier Jeanne Lavin, who, Driscoll notes, defied convention by opening what many consider to be the oldest modern fashion house in 1889. Charlotte, in the form of a stylized Regency-period dolphin, commemorates the wonder in nature demonstrated by the daughter of a bronze casting instructor at the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. Katharine, named for a friend, evokes a centuries-long, culture-spanning tradition of cast women’s hands as symbolic of protection. Paula is a crawfish form, a New Orleans-based reinterpretation of André Charles Boulle’s gilt-lobster appliqués, inspired by a resourceful server at Frankie and Johnny’s.
The arabesque design for Eleanor is based upon the elaborate brocade dress worn by the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Eleanora of Toledo (1522-62), who appears with her son, Giovanni, in a famed portrait (c. 1545) (fig. 1) by the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino. The portrait, today in the Galleria degli Uffizi, offers a highly refined and coolly elegant view of the Grand Duchess, testifying to the steely reserve and political savvy of the subject, who ruled Florence during absences of her husband, Grand Duke Cosimo I. The stylized pomegranate motif at the center of Eleanora’s gown covers the subject’s abdomen; it symbolized fertility andreferenced her Spanish heritage. But even as the direct gaze of the Grand Duchess engages the viewer –alluding to what Leonardo da Vinci termed the “motions of the mind” – that same tightly stretched, emblematic fabric seems to form a barrier, encasing, containing, and marking the subject, emphasizing her dynastic significance rather than individuality or personal identity.
If the decorative quality of these sculpted forms disrupts the expectations of some contemporary viewers, conditioned by twentieth-century critiques of beauty and utility as anathema to fine art, then the message has been received. One has only to look more closely, and thoughtfully, to recognize that Driscoll’s adoption of historic methods, concepts, and forms is not just informed but, rather, motivated by an acute awareness of women’s historical exclusion from and, at times, subversive adoption of the same.
In Driscoll’s still-life images, meticulous attention to detail and botanical accuracy recall the works of early modern Dutch artists including Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) and Maria van Oosterwijck (1630-93). Both were acclaimed fruit and flower painters at a time when the more esteemed genre of history painting was deemed a male preserve. The works are again inspired by women constrained by historical circumstance but who, nevertheless, persevered in their chosen professions. Garzoni and Gluck is named for two artists, Giovanna Garzoni (1600-70) and Hannah Gluckstein (1875-1978). The former was an Italian still-life painter (fig. 2), calligrapher, and miniature portraitist who, like her Dutch contemporaries, was famed during her lifetime, but whose work was largely ignored by art historians until the latter part of the twentieth century. Born nearly three centuries later, Gluckstein (aka Gluck) was a critically successful British artist who played a crucial role in standardizing the colors of oil paints and defied gender norms. In her own sumptuously rendered painting Driscoll’s choice of subject matter and virtuosic use of medium pay homage to the anachronistic pair. Another still-life, Evelyn’s Dragon Lizard, honors Evelyn Nesbitt (1884/85-1967), an artist’s model and performer. Driscoll associates the arrangement of viola, liriope, and lamb’s ear with “how the Frilled Dragon Lizard flares its neck in response to predators”. Nesbitt was repeatedly raped by the architect Stanford Whiteand the frame for the painting is one that White created. As such, the artist notes, White compositionally holds the bristling botanical evocation of Nesbitt captive.
Reflections, both literal and metaphorical, abound in Driscoll’s precisely rendered still-life paintings. The majority feature a sterling silver vessel, a traditional element in the genre from the seventeenth century. In their gleaming surfaces we may again glimpse Driscoll’s visage, much as one does in the works of the Dutch vanitas painter, Clara Peeters (1589?-aft. 1657), whose canvases include myriad self-portraits in miniature reflections (fig. 3). But Driscoll’s urns and compotes are portraits in themselves, each based on a heritage object passed down through the artist’s family. As such, they recall not just art-historical precedent, but also the genteel reverence for silver holloware in the American south. Traditional wedding gifts, these vessels are laden with the stuff of vanitas, reminding viewers that beauty, youth, and life itself are fleeting. In Driscoll’s hands, they brim with ripe, fuzzy peaches that might have been picked in Chilton county and heritage roses from a grandmother’s garden. The white, spray-painted wicker frames of Hester and Wetumpka confound expectations of the heavy gilt, carved wood embrasures that traditionally enshrine early modern still-life paintings. Instead, these seem to signal a regional, decorative tradition of homemaking; the precious quality of little girls’ bedrooms; and a make-do, nostalgia-filled, hand-me down culture – mother to daughter. More broadly, Driscoll notes, she is intrigued with the historical association between wicker and exoticism, “the decay/breakdown of post-colonial Southern life and white power.”
An exploration of the strength and endurance of women, past and present, in the face of obstacles, at times terrifying ones, is a leitmotif in this exhibition. This is nowhere more apparent than in Agatha. According to the medieval text of Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea, c. 1275), St. Agatha was a Christian virgin who lived in the city of Catania c. 253 CE. When she would not pray to idols, the provost of Sicily, Quintianus, ordered her tortured. Agatha’s breasts were removed, but she was miraculously healed. Quintianus then ordered her burned, and she died soon after. Driscoll’s Shielding Triptych seems to expand the form of Agatha, summoning her protective nature as the patron saint of breast cancer patients. Standing before these gilded objects, viewers may also be reminded of the Amazons, the race of warrior women who, according to Greek legend, easily wielded heavy armor in battle. According to ancient tradition and recounted by Christine de Pizan in her Book of the City of Ladies (Le livre de la cité des dames, 1405), “[I]t was [the Amazon’s] custom that . . . the most noble of them would have the left breast [removed] . . . in order to free them up to carry a shield.” While such accounts suggest that Amazonian mastectomy was an act of choice, even agency, this was not the case for Agatha or countless others throughout history. Driscoll’s Iron Spider serves as a chilling reminder of this. The artist identifies the sculpture as an interpretation of a medieval torture device reportedly used to remove women’s breasts, specifically as a punishment for self-induced abortion.
Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies features numerous biographies of strong women, femmes fortes, including Amazon queens. A proto-feminist narrative that refutes misogynist traditions, the text is constructed around the creation of an allegorical city built by and for women, populated by historical exemplars. If Driscoll creates her own City of Ladies with Magpie in the Mirror, we are reminded of Christine de Pizan’s introductory text, in which the author recounts how her advisor, Lady Reason, spurred her on, instructing:
My dear daughter and beloved friend, I’ve now prepared a trench for you which is good and wide, and have emptied it of earth which I have carried away in great loads on my shoulders. It’s now time for you to place inside the trench some heavy, solid stones which will form the foundations of the walls for the City of Ladies. So, take the trowel of your pen and get ready to set to work with vigour.
