May 19, 2005
‘Pochoirs’: A caper for two — and you, too
(See bottom of story for update on theft from show.)
Something or someone fleeting and half-glimpsed over a shoulder, maybe? An image remembered from an afternoon in Paris, perhaps? The artists aren’t saying for sure.
Kari Berger and Deborah Conger Hughes, photographers and creators of “Pochoirs: On the Move” — a new exhibit the HUB Gallery will host through June 12 — don’t want to reveal too much about the inspirations behind their show.
Maybe that’s why the two UW staffers and founding members of the UW Photographers Group subtitled their 32-image exhibit “A collaborative caper.”
“We want people to come at it freshly and come up with their own impressions,” said co-creator Berger, a program coordinator in Health Sciences Academic Services & Facilities. “We don’t want to direct their thinking.” Her partner in art, Hughes, is an office assistant in the Sociology Department.
Still, the two are willing to drop couple of hints. For one, find a nice, fat dictionary and you’ll learn that “pochoir” is French for stencil, and is a well known term for a sort of stencil graffiti art that has for years graced various neighborhoods of Paris. Berger and Hughes don’t deny their photographs owe something to a certain French pochoiriste, or public stencil artist, whose dark figures may appear overnight on an alley wall or just around the corner in gentle, shadowy pursuit of things never quite caught.
Maybe you’ve seen their ilk — looking a bit like filmmaker Jacques Tati’s comic character Mister Hulot (who famously took a holiday) and Nickelodeon TV’s Inspector Gadget (or possibly even Inspector Clouseau) the next — sort of a Parisian “Kilroy,” seeming perpetually to have passed by just a moment ago.
Exhibit co-creator Hughes, e-mailing while traveling in New York, allowed that the original idea for the photos came in 2003 when she and Berger, longtime friends, visited Berger’s storage locker inside a weather-beaten Ballard-area warehouse. “We thought it would be fun to shoot in there, possibly with just the heads and hands of children and friends peeking out behind corners, etc.,” Hughes wrote. “We then moved to an outside space which represents all cities to me.”
Berger said of the shoot, “The ideas evolved outside of that place and into the streets to take on a life of their own.”
Berger described the project partly by saying what it isn’t: “It’s not art, it’s not documentary, it’s just a collaborative, fun thing, a caper.” And she’s serious about the collaborative part; she and Hughes posed for and shot all the photographs but they aren’t saying, and in some cases might not even fully remember, who did exactly what. “It was a protracted date with serendipity. We were continually inspired by what we found,” she said.
Hughes wrote that Berger is “a creator and manipulator of her natural world, and our collaboration has created a new place for the (figure) to roam and to give thought to.” She added, “We aren’t very interested in explaining what the pochoirs are up to.” After all, when glimpsed in his natural habitat — peripheral, fleeting — the figure “is there on its own mission and will roam where it pleases.”
If pressed just a bit, or if you read their poster closely enough, these two photographers will let loose one more clue: The name “Nemo” — a name of some meaning to lovers of pochoirs.
Beyond that, they say, it’s up to the beholders to decide what they’ve done.
That would be you. Berger and Hughes await your opinions. They invite visitors to write their thoughts about the show in the “Pochoir Book,” which is in the gallery.
UPDATE: Pochoir book purloined!
The guest book for Kari Berger and Deborah Hughes’ Pochoirs exhibit has been stolen. The artists say anyone with information about the well-loved book may e-mail them at kberger@u.washington.edu or dhughes@u.washington.edu
