Kid Stuff

Every parent has the same experience. When you look at your own child, you see the most beautiful creature in the universe, an ever-changing bundle of dreams, quirks and personality in a glowing flesh-and-bone package that you know so well, yet not at all. That’s the bittersweet nut of parental love: You can try to shape your kids in your own image, but they still manage to squirm and squeeze their way out of the mold. And truth be told, you really want that to happen. You want them to be their own people.

When artists grapple with such issues, the result is much the same, a concept that comes to light in total living color in the works of Spittin' Image: Ten Artists Consider Their Children, a new exhibit opening this afternoon with a reception from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Mizel Arts & Culture Center’s Singer Gallery, 350 South Dahlia Street, in the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center. These are not sentimental views. Instead, the artists explore their offspring’s emerging humanity from all angles: private and primal, objectified and subjectified, as observer and as collaborator. And “stunning” does not begin to describe the outcome.

Spittin’ Image continues at the Singer through December 27 (open daily except Saturdays); get details at www.maccjcc.org or call 303-316-6360.
Nov. 22-Jan. 17, 2009