Marking the beginning of a new year of artistic creation, as well as the start of a new semester, the Women's Studies Research Center opened a new exhibit for viewing last week. Titled "Off-Kilter," the exhibit features an impressive array of paintings with drawn and collaged elements, created by artist Karen Moss. In a program for the exhibit, Curator Michele L'Heureux shares that Moss's art "reflects the complex, tumultuous, and confusing state of our times. Instead of avoiding this reality, 'Off-Kilter' engages us in some of its bleaker components: eating disorders, youth violence, homelessness, rampant consumerism, and environmental devastation."

Upon an initial walk through the exhibit, one feels happy, interested, and inspired by the bright colors in Moss's paintings, staged spaciously throughout the Kniznick Gallery on stark walls painted orange, blue and white.

But the discerning viewer need not be fooled by the exhibit's Technicolor surface: Moss's statement is indeed a serious one. Many of the paintings feature elements that are manipulated or unnatural, such as animal-human hybrid creatures, nature landscapes depicted in neon hues, and characters with distorted body types. The characters in the
paintings resemble the artistic concoction one can imagine if illustrations of a Lewis Carroll work were combined with pages from Artist Barbie's sketchbook: cartoonish and garish at the same time.

The exhibit opening reception that took place last Thursday evening was quite a special event because the artist attended and spoke about her favorite pieces. Moss, a petite and pleasant-looking woman, stood in front of three of the larger paintings of the exhibit, hung side-by-side on its main wall. She began her discussion with an insight into the inspiration for this triptych.

Moss explained that, several years ago, she made a stop during a car trip and happened upon a store where she found several children's coloring books from the 1940s and 1950s. Flipping through the pages, she saw illustrations of children posing as soldiers, med- ics, nurses-all completely nor- mal role-play options for children who, like Moss, grew up during the World War II era. "The girls [in the coloring books] dressed the same way I did. I started giving a lot of thought to that period, and thinking about now, and what has happened since." She dwelled on the roles that children play in a society that is burdened beyond their comprehension, and the youngsters began to make appearances as characters in her paintings. "The coloring books launched me into art that would last
the next six years."

The painting immediately behind Moss, situated in the middle of the triptych, shows a young girl with pin-curled hair in a 1950s style dress, Mary Janes and bobby socks, pushing a stroller that carries a bonneted bird-human hybrid creature. The doll-like girl smiles and walks through a colorful collaged city-scape, unaware of the rat-boy hybrid that is nibbling on trash at her feet.

On a washed-out layer of the background collage behind her there is a brick wall, decrepit wood fence, sketches of rickety buildings and giant waves of water overtaking it all. "These are icons that represent to me what landscape is today in the city," says Moss. "Hurricane Katrina, tsunamis, trees falling down from hurricanes and people's homes being destroyed... There are a lot of disturbing things going on there-it's almost a post- nuclear landscape."

Call them disturbing, call them brash-but one cannot deny the skillful way that Moss's paintings reflect the change in culture over generations. The elements of nature that are manipulated in her work are meant to parallel the processed, unnatural societal norms we maintain today. "We are all being altered all the time; we're used to this idea," she says. "My nature is to be fairly up-beat and positive rather than depressed; but well informed."