Mobile
Page 2 of 4
In 1967, "White Rabbit" was the suburban teen's emancipation proclamation, a get-out-of-jail pass for any wannabe flower child willing to turn on, tune in and drop out. The song was a pithy doctrine, a mantra, and a march for m-m-my generation; a fight song for the willful and a cautionary tale for the wise.
Slick had her own Wonderland life and she acknowledges her continued fascination with the story has something to do with how Alice's life parallels her own.
"I was brought up in rigid environment, so was Alice. My father was a Republican investment banker in San Francisco in the '50s, Alice grew up in Victorian England. Alice goes on an adventure, she is open to new experiences, she takes drugs. I found the '60s, I explored what was available. Also, Alice was on her own, and nobody saved her. She didn't need saving, neither did I. That appeals to me."
Works available at the Wentworth Gallery illustrate her continued interest in Alice, the characters she meets along the way, and her adventures.
"Timekeeper ..." is part of Slick's larger Wonderland Suite. In the giclee' print reproduced from an original acrylic painting, the dapper and fuzzy white rabbit squats, front and center, inside his rectangular black void. His ears and eyes are alert, his gargantuan hindquarters and fluffy feet are parked firmly on the inarticulate void. He wears a long-sleeved, high-riding vest coat and a dotted tie, and holds a watch fob connected to his vest pocket by a chain. His gaze is both dumbfounded and alert, as if he is considering an idiotic question or a confounding puzzle. Perhaps he vexed over his watch running backward. Grace's explanation is enigmatic: "The White Rabbit represents curiosity -- always in a hurry and just out of reach. He is a moving mystery. His backward watch annoys him into constant running. The race for knowledge and experience leads Alice to recognition of the absurd. The rabbit/curiosity leads -- we follow."
Her explanation annoys me. I don't want to follow, but still ... I'm curious. The rabbit is pricked on by the perception of lost time, by the specter of too little time to sate his curious appetite. The bunny's quixotic and sober expression is the look of a hare realizing the absurd imposition of a measurement on time, his time, and his watch's power to impose an arbitrary measurement. He's rendered dumbstruck, mute and motionless by his realization. His curiosity will never be sated! There's not enough time. More time lost!
If Grace Slick had chosen a more reasonable profession, if her coming of age had landed in a decade guided by logic and proportion instead of chaos and distortion, she may have been a successful children's book illustrator. She's got the chops for that. And she imbues the requisite child innocence with enough adult content to keep grown up eyes open.
In her illustrations to Alice's adventures, Slick occasionally likes to draft new characters into the illustrations. "White Rabbit in Wonderland" includes some of her favorite characters from her own epoch. In her own words: "Timothy Leary the Mad Hatter. Ram Dass the Caterpillar. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee with The Racoon as my Cheshire Cat, the Lab Rat as my Dormouse."
Alice kneels on a huge mushroom, balances herself on a tree, and gazes down a cobble stone path to a bunny leaping down the lane. The stone path leads to a blue bay fronting the setting sun on a red horizon. Cheshire Raccoon rests on a limb above Alice, Timothy Leary smiles and waves at us, and Ram Dass sits lotus position on a mushroom smoking a Hookah. The crimson orange sky, red polka dotted mushroom and the verdant green hills stop about three microdots short of a hallucinatory intensity.
Lewis Carroll might sniff at Slick's inclusion of Ram Dass, Pope of the Aquarius Age, and Dr. Timothy Leary, headmaster to turned-on lunatic academy, but the update makes the work hers. And for those of us with psychedelic merit badges, she makes it ours.
The illustration is ebullient and giddy enough to release Richard Nixon's inner child, if only "Tricky Dick" had sipped that tea ...
Some kind of mushroom
Enough about the artwork already. I wanted to hear about the Presidential tea party. I ask Ms. Slick the question foremost on my mind: "What about the White House tea party and the trip Dick Nixon never took. Did that really happen?"
Speaking of 4.80000
-
Best of The Blotter 2007
Nov 28, 2007 -
Living La Vida Loophole
Aug 22, 2007 -
Justice for the Jena Six
Jul 25, 2007 - More »
Latest in Cover
More by Scott Lucas
Calendar
-
Coach Conroy's All Sports Camp @ Chestnut Square Park
- Tue., June 17, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Wed., June 18, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Thu., June 19, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Mon., July 7, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Tue., July 8, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Wed., July 9, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Thu., July 10, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Mon., July 21, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Tue., July 22, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., Wed., July 23, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. and Thu., July 24, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.
-
-
Coveted Luxury Watches
- Mondays-Fridays, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Continues through Dec. 30
-
-
AllMachines
- Through Dec. 30, 12-9 p.m.
-
-
AllMachines - Raymond Forklift
- Through Dec. 30, 12-5 p.m.
-
-
AllMachines - Forklifts
- Through Dec. 30, 12-6 p.m.
-
-
Blueprints For A Better City
Some New Developments Are Getting It Right
-
Fall Arts Events
-
Why New Teachers Quit 2
Former CMS Educators Tell Their Stories and Offer Solutions
