Whimsical 'Picture Boxes' on Display in Mullins Library

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Viewing artist Ben Strawn’s “Picture Boxes” exhibit in Mullins Library may provoke one to wonder what images drift through his dreams. The paintings are vivid and unusual enough to qualify for a first-rate dream state, the kind when all you can say after waking is “Wow.”

Strawn creates the picture boxes, each in identical 8-inch by 8-inch frames, by painting acrylic figures on successive layers of plexiglass. The multiple layers give the images both three-dimensional depth and a milky, overcast film, creating both a distance from the viewer and the impression of dreamlike images swathed in cloud. The impression is heightened by the subject matter — whimsical images of bunnies, bears and fish in unexpected scenarios that complement startling images of headless men skewered with knives or surrounded by floating bottles and cups on kite strings. And, of course, there are clouds.

Squid depicts a bright orange squid wearing a multi-storied house as a hat, while puffy white clouds float past. Stepping Stone shows a headless man bent over under the weight of the one-room school house on his back, while carefully balancing on a rounded stone, evidently poised to make the leap to another rounded stone, the drama of which scenario unfolds in a field of clouds. Dottie shows a young girl dressed in vintage clothing, whom Strawn identifies as his own grandmother as a young girl, staring out unsmiling at the viewer as a small school of fish clusters around her.

Strawn has a delightful personality to match his images. For instance, he says the paintings in this exhibit were done over the course of last year in “an attempt to paint a picture a week.” However, he explains, “It turns out there were only 19 weeks last year.”

Strawn lists among his many influences, “the art of Joseph Cornell, the early stop-motion films of Vladislav Starevich, the short Russian film The Hedgehog in the Fog by Yuriy Norshteyn, the haunting children's books of George MacDonald, the nonfiction stories of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, as well as The Little Prince, science fair dioramas (the kind in cardboard boxes you look at through a peep hole in the front,) banjo music when played slow and accompanied by a singing saw, and the fact that leaves blowing in the tree tops sometimes sound just like the ocean.”

The exhibit may very well bring a smile to viewers’ faces, or leave them pondering the images that inhabit the very best of their dreams.

Ben Strawn is an alumnus of the University of Arkansas. He lives in Fayetteville with his wife Jessica Robin, their three dogs, and Indigo Wren, their newborn daughter.

“Picture Boxes” will remain on display in Mullins Library through the end of April. To see an online gallery of the exhibit, visit http://libinfo.uark.edu/info/artexhibit.asp, or for more information, visit Strawn’s Web site at http://benstrawn.com.