he ability to fantasize is the ability to survive. I agree with Nietzsche, who said, "We have art that we do not perish in the truth." In our daily lives, we are making do, even as things get rougher as we go along. We lose love, people, jobs -- and survive by fantasizing. That's what art is for. And Amy Hauber's art arises from clay that she uses to make "a hopeful and playful object that attempts to represent this positive take on the often difficult nature of life." For her creations' starting points, Hauber references current pop-cultural cartoon iconography, along with remembered imagery from her youth. She believes that children look at the world through surprised, wondering and often trusting eyes. And while we may not be able to enhance the surprise and the wonder, we can sustain the trust, and we can -- by trusting ourselves to a child's world -- see old and rusty things through a kaleidoscopic rainbow of pure emotion. Hauber has maintained her own early mental pictures "in crispy Technicolor" which she "honors and recreates through sculptural forms." By enjoying with her what she found delightful, we subconsciously absorb this delight and it sparks our own resonant, associative memories. Hauber's recollections reflect those detail-oriented, dear, familiar, formative observations of the young, such as a grandmother's pink tile in the powder room, an intriguing floral print on a favorite toddler jumpsuit and "a tape recorder which I would whisper into in my closet and quietly play back and erase as if to verify my existence." These kinds of elements are incorporated into her constant process of "editing and abstracting a lifetime-sized matrix of bright, shiny and endless impulses and emotions." And they're distilled into toy-like pieces with softly rounded edges and brilliant hues, decorated with patterned paper or hand-painted textures. Some have moving parts and implied buttons and functions. Their organic symmetry alludes to a "cookie-cutter quality" of industrialized society and "the universal human condition of consciousness." Hauber's "Double Fun" series' pleasing colors and pretty shapes are partly inspired by the Cartoon Network's Powerpuff Girls, those super-heroic kindergartners who populate a fantasy world where anything can happen, who save the day again and again with sincerity, strength and cuteness. Hauber's aerodynamic abstractions capture the essence of these characters in bubblegum tints, deconstructing their horizontally oriented oval heads, eyes big as dessert plates and feet that resemble socks filled with wet sand. "doublefun autumn" is showered with fall flowers that feel Japanese-influenced, evoking both traditional beauty and anime simplicity. A tiny toy couple appears on its structure like a bride and groom stranded atop a wedding cake, hoping for rescue from all the various grown-up voices of sensibility ringing in their heads. Also cited as influential to these gestural works is the tough-girl interactive/social Web game "Sissyfight 2000," the purpose of which is to crush one's enemies, based on rules invented in the merciless arena of the schoolyard. Hauber's philosophical take here echoes Jenny Holzer's 1980s truisms about the dual nature of children: that they're simultaneously the cruelest of all and the best hope for the future. Other tableaux express unfulfilled longings for true love and motherhood. Shipwrecked beds, empty cribs and gilded petals comprise sad memorials to something unknown that may have forever slipped away. In "I never promised," fallen blackbirds lie among pale roses nipped in the bud, while a lush garden blooms wildly beyond a wall. "fertility 2010" features an animated array of awkwardly sweet silvery mother-child forms joined in a playful parade. Some pieces epitomize the consequences of choice in their very physicality. "follow me: bump" will give one a rough ride on a clumsy little vessel in dirty tones while the gentle curves and radiant springtime shades of "follow me: wing" seem to suggest a soaring new start on everything. By mixing intuitive and sensual logic, Hauber can take fantastic ideas and characters and activate them into an alphabet for artmaking that satisfies on multiple levels.

New Work by Amy Hauber continues through Feb. 28 at Clay Place Gallery, Shadyside. 682-3737.

writer:
ALICE WINN

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©Pittsburgh City Paper 2001