Paper Crane Gallery celebrates opening

Through a gaping, green mouth with sinister teeth was a cramped hallway leading into an art gallery tucked away in a former warehouse.

Paper Crane Gallery, located on West Sixth Street behind Photo Solutions, opened its doors Friday for a grand opening show inspired by monsters.

Luke Woodaman, one of the four co-founders of Paper Crane Gallery, said the idea behind the new gallery was to create a space where emerging and up-and-coming artists could display their work for free.

“We wanted to give them a place where they could do installations, paint on the walls,” Woodaman said.

The Friday night show was inspired mainly by the Halloween season, Woodaman said. 

A large Sony hi-definition television turned on and displayed video of a young child punching a clown doll, while at the bottom of the screen a digitally rendered clown doll bobbled to and fro, with a menacing look on its face.

The piece, “Playthings,” by digital art student Torlando Hakes, was a representation of how children absorb behavior during their formative years.

Hakes said his inspiration for the piece came from a 1960s study by Stanford professor of psychology Albert Bandura about children modeling violent behavior by observing adults’ actions.

“Constantly, I’m thinking about behavior and how children are developing mentally,” Hakes said.

Through computer modeling and video compositing, Hakes was able to create a virtual bobbing clown doll, much like a 3-D Pixar movie animation, and to add streaming video footage at the top of the same screen.

Hakes said art is mind-expanding and allows him to express different concepts visually, in a more thought-provoking manner.

Local artist Cory Clements discussed one of his pieces, “Feeling’s Mutual,” a drawing of two monsters meeting for the first time.

“I like to incorporate humor into my drawings,” he said. “I pretty much use everyday interactions as my inspiration.”

“Feeling’s Mutual” depicts a werewolf and a skeleton during their first encounter.
Clements said he tried to humanize the monsters as much as he could.
This included drawing a scarf and Slayer T-shirt on the skeleton and a mustache on the werewolf.

“The werewolf has ill intentions of eating the other monster at first,” Clements said. “But it turns out to be a skeleton up close, so his plans to eat him were foiled.”
Clements has no formal training and taught himself to draw four years ago through practice, he said.

His old-school media, including dip pens, quills, ink and paper, is what he used to create his pieces for the show.

“I like being able to zone out and not think about what’s going on around me while I’m drawing,” he said. “It’s a nice release.”

Tiffany Marie Hanner, another Bloomington artist, said she normally uses recycled or found materials for her art pieces.

Using zombie children as her subjects, Hanner produced “Family Dinner,” a drawing of two zombie children eating brains at a dinner table.

“The scene reminded me of a ‘50s nuclear family,” she said. “I thought it would be unnerving to use those situations and add horror and gore to them.”

With material from old children’s books and decorative paper, Hanner was able to create a kind of collage around her drawing.

A quote from a cutout book reads, “I know some ways in which I am different from every other person.” Hanner said the children haven’t come to the full realization yet that they aren’t human.

“Art to me is the visual representation of the psychology of the brain,” Hanner said. “When you look at it, you are seeing how the artist’s brain works on paper. It’s about being open-minded and putting things in perspective.”