A & E

"Reduce-reuse-recycle" might have been the mantra of the 1990s, when many recycling programs in this country and others began. But an art exhibit at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in the North Side proves that the three R's still are with us, and here, made manifest in the most creative of ways.

From recycled and reclaimed materials to familiar images, "Altered Meanings" explores the unique art-making processes of Cat Chow and Jesse McLean. Two young contemporary artists, Chow and McLean both collect and repurpose to produce compelling and innovative works of art.

Chow does this through the use of familiar materials like house keys, leather belts and rubber O-rings, and McLean does it through imagery found on Web sites.

It might seem like a stretch to define culling imagery from the Internet as reuse in terms of the three R's. But when one considers the overwhelming barrage one can be hit with while surfing the Net, it makes sense.

McLean, who once worked at Pittsburgh Filmmakers before beginning a master of fine arts degree in moving image at the University of Illinois at Chicago, visited the Craftsmen's Guild last month to conduct a workshop with secondary school students about making short videos from appropriated imagery.

In the gallery, she shows similar works in which she has combined still imagery and video to create three separate video works and several smaller, digitally manipulated photographic prints.

Except for her video piece "The Eternal Quarter Inch," which combines footage from a Christian rock concert with internal views of kaleidoscopes, the remaining works are all of imagery she found on the Internet, and nearly all relate to the Iraq war.

But instead of depicting the war, the images show Iraqi citizens and U.S. soldiers engaged in anything but. Instead they are going about daily tasks or, in one particular case, sunning and playing poolside at one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.

Five prints from her "Diver" series feature individuals diving in the pool, void of the actual pool or any background whatsoever, save for a white-and-gray checkerboard pattern. Isolated in this way, the viewer has no real context, which puts the subject in question. The artist says this is further underscored by the patterned background, which many who have used the design program Adobe Photoshop will recognize as the "transparent background."

"Revealing the structure is a reminder that these images are capable of being altered continuously, from the photojournalist's chosen composition to the method used to deploy the images, to the hand of the artist myself," McLean says.

With the video-montage piece "Invisible Guest," she uses another Photoshop reference, the "Magic Wand" selection tool, which appears in this piece in animated fashion, selecting various parts of photographs as they appear on the screen in seemingly random succession.

McLean says she decided to incorporate these basic elements of the program for obvious reasons. "I was working in Photoshop to develop some aesthetic strategies," she says. "This is when I began to experiment around with letting the interface show, letting the structure of Photoshop become a part of the piece. Using the Magic Wand tool to create marching ant selections created images that looked cartographic, and that seemed so appropriate, in a creepy way.

"For me, the checkerboard background in Photoshop has become a kind of void, too," she adds. "I purposely chose poses where it looked like the people were diving into the background, as if they had escaped momentarily and were now about to return."

By deconstructing scenes from news media in this way -- that is, replacing the original content with remnants of obvious manipulation, such as the cursor or Photoshop's Magic Wand selector -- McLean questions their cause and meaning while challenging viewers' understanding of their relationship to these photographs.

"There's a lot of joy in these images," McLean says. "People from all walks of life are enjoying themselves despite living through a nightmare."

Whereas McLean's works are a bit ambiguous as to how and where the imagery she uses was sourced, it's obvious from what and where Chow has drawn her inspiration.

Take, for example, her piece "OBAMA #6 (Keeper)," which is a two-foot-diameter circle made of house keys and hung on one wall. Not only are the keys obvious discards, but the piece is self-referential. It's as if it is a giant keychain.

"Recently, my work has returned to minimalism," Chow says. "I am interested in saying the most by using the least."

That goes a long way in explaining the piece "OBAMA #10 (Black Metal Musique)," which hangs from the ceiling in the center of the gallery. Made of 13 LP record dies, it looks like a massive grouping of medallions hanging from a necklace.

If it seems like most of these pieces look a bit like jewelry, it's no coincidence. The Brooklyn-based Chow is well known for her transformation of everyday objects into wearable art. Her earlier works are fabricated from materials like dollar bills, zippers and keys. While her new works forge the frontier of sculptural and installation art, her technique remains the same: presenting common materials in a new context that provokes reflection about social and identity issues.

"As an artist, I continually challenge myself to grow and discover the new," Chow says. "To me, the work (in this show) isn't that different in the sense that I am still exploring similar themes of desire, beauty and seduction."

These notions are best summed up with the pieces "OBAMA #3 (Test Pressing)," "OBAMA #4 (Revolutions Per Minute)" and "OBAMA #5 (Repeater)," which are particularly interesting because each large disc-shaped sculpture is made from tightly wound, second-hand dress belts, yet are totally evocative in an entirely new way.

As for why she renamed all of the pieces "Obama" for this exhibition, she says: "Although I would never call myself a political artist, it is important for my work to serve as social statements. Titling all the works 'Obama' can be seen as an art piece in itself and, undoubtedly, the most important work in the entire show."

Also as part of her work with the guild, Chow hopes to develop an ongoing project, "Keeper," which she began in 2006. Chow says she finds keys to be "particularly interesting" in that, when one no longer knows what a key unlocks, one still has a hard time parting with it. "Through this project, I hope to repurpose those unwanted keys to a better end," she says.

In support of Chow's efforts to create a "constellation" of keys for a show she is planning at the Nevada Museum of Art, the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild has placed key collection boxes at its North Shore and Downtown galleries. Patrons are encouraged to stop by and donate their unwanted keys to this new cosmic creation.

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