THE SHOW: “House of Leaves” by Gregg Oxley
WHERE: Museum in the Community, near Hurricane (show now closed)

“She drank the same rock-gut sherry I did when I drank and not a bad view from the window except the roof was caving in…” –Charly Hamilton

By Amy J. Williams with Charly Jupiter Hamilton

Haunting, funny, lonely, disturbing… These were feelings I felt upon seeing Gregg Oxley’s installation exhibit, “House of Leaves,” at The Museum in the Community in Putnam County. Although the exhibit closed in early September, it’s worth mentioning and describing the work’s ambitions.

According to Oxley, a recent Hurricane High Schol grad who is heading to school in Savannah, Ga., “House of Leaves” is based on the idea of sudden, tragic changes to any one individual. The main piece reflects the story of a woman who lost her husband and then, slowly, must rely on the help of others to get through day-to-day life.

My first visit to the exhibit was before Hurricane Katrina, but on the second visit it was intriguing how the recreation of an abandoned home was a reminder of the disturbing new reality along the Gulf Coast.

Oxley created a moving installation based on his interest in exploring abandoned homes. He took pictures of what he found and they were exhibited on a side wall — dead kittens and mold in the refrigerator are juxtaposed with colorful flowers blooming in the yard.

The main exhibit featured a recreated room: a television screen full of static, empty hair-coloring bottles, so many other of the stray pieces of the lives we each live.

Each wall of the exhibit was a work of art itself — found pieces, an altered book, a large mural of telephone poles reminiscent of crosses. The wall murals were intricate, and each piece a work of art itself.

WHAT CHARLY HAD TO SAY:

Charly thought the abundance of hair color bottles fascinating. “What do we hold onto?” he asked me. “When everything else fades, sometimes we cling to those simple things like coloring hair to keep us alive. It’s like the mirage of having your hair done, the hope of having a husband, and so we work at this one fake thing.”

“For awhile,” Charly continued, “when I was in the Navy around the Philippine ports in the North China Sea, sailoring in a kind of uncontrolled AWOL squalor, I took to smoking English Oval cigarettes and would imagine myself the whole empire in one person, smoking as the edges of my vision gave away to chaos. I felt some of the same kind of feeling looking around Oxley’s back-room mobile home deconstruction. Mobile homes, the illusion of a home, marriage, and black Clairol hair dye. The illusion of happiness. Art can scare you, and doesn’t always fit on the living room wall. Sometimes it is the living room wall, falling in. Please remember it all as long as you can. If you don’t have a life, no one can take it from you.”

As we left Charly said, “What would the woman who lived in this house think was significant? Would it be the muffin pan? Did she make muffins? Did her husband call her ‘Muffin?’”

AMY CONCLUDES:

Walking into this art was like walking into a picture, a tragic picture. Yet it was hard to leave.

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