October 9, 2009 - The Chronocle Herald Photos of dead birds make a haunting show By ELISSA BARNARD Arts Reporter Known for her beautiful yet disturbing photographs of the interiors of abandoned buildings, Angela Carlsen has shifted direction, but only slightly, in a startling new exhibit, Pretty Bird, at Argyle Fine Art. Carlsen went into the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History where curator of zoology Andrew Hebda showed her taxidermied birds ranging from an everyday crow to an exotic flamingo from a late 19th century Halifax zoo. The eye and sensibility of an artist make all the difference in interpreting these specimens, which Nova Scotia painter Rose Adams has also used in a different way in her paintings and drawings. Carlsen photographed the eyeless, tagged and preserved birds in a stark, straightforward way, though they also appear lush. She displays them against soft, delicate, wallpaper patterns created using symbols and shapes translated from folklore and mythology surrounding each bird. The photographs are set in vintage oval frames, which are gilt and ornate. The pictures recall treasured family portraits on dark-panelled walls in a well-to-do, late 19th century dwelling. The overall look is Victorian and recalls an era when taxidermy and natural science were very popular among the middle class. As Carlsen states in this exhibit, photography is "a form of taxidermy" in freezing a moment forever. Her intent is to "capture a subject which would not normally be seen as beautiful and present it in a way that can be appreciated and studied more closely." Carlsen is also interested in the traditional link between birds and the soul and these images — creepy, beautiful, haunting — dive right into ideas about nature and culture and reflections on mortality. Carlsen pairs a dead cardinal against a "wallpaper" of "lucky" horseshoes and clover. The blue jay is a beautiful sombre portrait of the bird’s head, close-up and in profile, within a dull silvery frame. Remarkable images include a heron with its noble head bent down and a flamingo, seen as a section of pale pink feathers with collapsed feet. Carlsen has again wedded thought with technique for a deeply rewarding show. Also at Argyle Fine Art is the Urban Myths and Legends. Inspired by the Atlantic Film Festival, gallery owner Adriana Afford invited animators, illustrators and comic book artists to pick one of their favourite urban legends and illustrate it. NSCAD graduate Josh Murray uses a conceptual grid in his giant white painting to depict the myth, still current among kids, that drinking a can of coke and eating pop rocks will make you explode. He’s repeated an image of a little boy inside a bubble. Bubbles come out of his ears and mouth as he cradles his stomach, the innards of which are visible and fomenting. The babysitter myth gets good play in more than one work including Mark MacAulay’s blaring, horror-movie poster for Don’t Go Upstairs. Nick Brunt creates his own legend in his illustration-style painting of a menacing robot emerging from a door in a tree trunk for The Greater North American Tree Robot. Candace Sepulis captures the darkness in hitchhiker myths with sinister film noir images in The Hitchhiker/Heartbreaker, of black heat transfers on a plywood skateboard. Other works include Colleen MacIsaac’s Bloody Mary!, a drawing of everything you’d find in a bathroom — a toothpaste tube, towels, hair brush — warning you not to look in the mirror or else Bloody Mary will kill you; Eric Dyck’s digital media comic strip, The Stolen Kidney, about Americans robbing Canadian tourists of their organs because of their bad health care system and Ed Beals’ imitation of a page out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not which, in this case, depicts a flying saucer lowering bigfoot onto the planet. There are 17 exhibiting artists in all, including John Andrews, Faith Erin Hicks, Shelia Provazza and Patrick Burgomaster, Jono Doron, Justin Lee, James Farrell, Lynn Wilton, Michael De Adder and Stephen Gillis. ( ebarnard@herald.ca)