by Darby Parsons
Chris Papillo’s “things you wanted to make real” is on display in Burlington at Maple Street’s JDK Gallery through August 13.
“As a young maiden he dreamed of his bright amethyst future. His rosy, flour-powdered cheeks would sparkle in the black forest…” This line from a handmade paper piece of Papillo’s leads me to believe the entire show is an autobiographical, larger than life collage. Multi-media pieces fill an entire gallery wall. Artifacts salvaged by the adult from his childhood’s stream of conscious. Trail of Teas is reminiscent of a wind chime with used tea bags trailing down from a rusty antique spool of sorts that is stuffed with bird wings. A framed color pencil drawing of a bunny is scrawled over with “a shilling for a soul”. The largest center piece is a massive, handmade piece of paper called The Red Flame Bird. The paper is filled to the edges with a personalized and dramatic color-wheel. The entire thing is written over in color pencil with a poem that begins with; “The red flame bird of blood red wings flies across the sea to ((rome)) all alone lust for you and me.”
From photographs to glassed in bird wings the range of materials used is nearly limitless yet the eclectic collage forms a cohesive sense of tone and sentiment. Chris Papillo’s imagination and personal mythology are at work and play here to a fantastic extreme. “Things you wanted to make real” at JDK Gallery, Burlington, until August 13.
