Best Local Solo Show
Wood Nymphs at Taxidermy Gallery
Jane Almirall's first solo show was understated but powerful. What set Wood Nymphs apart from other local shows was its tight narrative strength. Almirall's simple watercolors of birds carrying, or sometimes tangled in, red string explored issues of migration, relocation and nesting with a hefty dose of ambiguity. In her world, the difference between a bird making a nest with red string and a bird being pulled to the ground by red string was not in its facial expression -- birds neither smile nor frown -- but in the subtle positioning of the bird on the page, the direction the bird was moving and the title of the piece. The titles provoked human analogies, many of which were funny, a few of which were heartbreaking. Underpublicized and modest in scale, this show was a well-kept secret ... perhaps a little too well-kept.
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