Odd Obsessions -- Creations Inspired By Everyday Life On Display At Coca

----------------------------------------------------------------- Art review

"Kunstkabinett" and "Home Remedies and Magnificent Obsessions" through Aug. 19 at the Center on Contemporary Art, 65 Cedar St. Tuesdays-Saturdays 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission, $2. A special, self-guided Tour de Farce of oddball collections will be held 1-5 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $15; 728-1980. A Tour de Farce party will be held 8 p.m. Saturday at CoCA ($5). -----------------------------------------------------------------

It's difficult to imagine what kind of obsession would compel Ottawa artist Germaine Koh to spend three years unraveling thrift-store sweaters and then reknitting them into a huge work-in-progress that so far is a 130-foot-long muffler. The knitted piece, about five feet wide, snakes across the floor of the Center on Contemporary Art like a river of yarn.

The fact that Koh intends to stick to her knitting is clear from the three-foot-long knitting needles that hold the stitches as though at any moment a giant woman might take them up and knit a few more rows. She carefully documents each bit of yarn that goes into the work - which thrift store or yard sale it came from and when - giving the piece a satiric edge that pokes fun at the self-important "documentation" that goes into much conceptual art.

Koh's is one of the most dramatic of the "magnificent obsessions" that make up part of the group show now on view at CoCA. But it is by no means the only one that begs the question, what on earth would make someone devote so much time to that?

Like building a house out of matchsticks or copying the Bible onto a deck of cards, the exhibitors in this often amusing show have spent countless hours creating labor-intensive projects whose value or artistic merit is certainly in the eyes of the beholder. Called "Home Remedies and Magnificent Obsessions," the show was curated by CoCA director Susan Purves, who describes it as "conceptually based work often with a satiric view but firmly based in daily life."

New use for bread tabs

Equally as obsessive and just as domestic in choice of materials is Wilbur Hathaway's wall-sized mural made of the colored plastic tabs that seal the plastic bags in which bread is sold. Up close the image is undecipherable. From across the room it is the giant, naked groin of a man. The image may be a joke - bread and the male organ as the staffs of life? - but figuring out something to do with those irritating little bread tabs is a stroke of genius.

And one of the best pieces is the triptych by Gerard Menendez and Byron Lymburn. Created out of 66,000 plastic beads strung on rods into curtains, the images are of Mary and Jesus on either side of a package of frozen salisbury steaks. The juxtaposition of the commercial and sacred could be social commentary, but the wit in the piece comes from the beaded curtains suggesting a Tijuana cantina.

Curious collections

Also on view as a companion show is "Kunstkabinett," curated by Seattle artist Sean Elwood. The German term refers to the cases that hold collections of curiosities and souvenirs, and it has a decidedly 18th- and 19th-century tone. Naturalists, explorers and others displayed their collections in kunstkabinetts in their homes before public museums became the repositories of collections of all types.

CoCA's Kunstkabinett includes such sincere "collections" as a carefully documented collection of nails salvaged from an estate sale; a group of black and white photographs of Washington State Ferries made by a man who has devoted part of his life to the project; and a quilt made of clothes labels painstakingly sewn together by hand.

It also includes more self-conscious, sometimes satirical collections made by artists, such as an elaborate "documentation" by Seattle artist Paul Natkin that purports to prove he was temporarily abducted by a primitive tribe that resides in a Capitol Hill park.

Taken altogether, the complementary shows offer a number of clever, sometimes funny and occasionally touching displays, including a sweet homage to a Spokane woman who spent her life running a pet store. It's easy to ignore the few bloopers in the show, such as the faux doggie droppings.