Artscape

Home bodies

by Tracy Zollinger Turner

WILL SHILLING PHOTO

Melissa Vogley Woods and Helma Groot

Houses, hearth, quilts, gardens, natural beauty and family vacations carry all of the most romantic notions about home life, which we are reminded of daily by everything from commercial slogans to political speeches. But domestic bliss—while not exactly a myth—is simply never the whole story.

In Domesticate Me: Habitats Natural and Unnatural, a robust exhibit that features five well-established local artists, the comfort and allure of home are there in all their glory. But so are all of the unsettling underpinnings of domestic life, like fear, insecurity, anger—even obliviousness to the disaster next door.

The five women participating in the show had all encountered each other professionally over the years, but having children at Indianola Elementary School at the same time brought them together. They planned to go to Gallery Hops together monthly to take in some current local work and commiserate on the balancing act between motherhood and pursuing a fine arts career.

But while life has often "gotten in the way" of their social plans, according to Helma Groot, one of the group's members, they did manage to come together for this show and find common themes.

One that runs throughout the show, but is particularly prevalent in Groot's work, is the turbulent habitat of rivers. Through mobiles, sculptures and house-shaped paintings, her human figures seem to be constantly caught up in the currents with fish, debris and bombs. With childhood experiences in both Holland and Indonesia, Groot has been a firsthand witness to many human battles with rising waters.

"In nature, there is good and bad, the same way that in human nature there is good and bad," she said. "And there can be scary things floating beneath the surface."

Groot, who'll be featured on HGTV's That's Clever in March, is also the business partner of fellow exhibitor Melissa Vogley Woods. Woods founded Painted Monkey, a former storefront in the Short North that evolved into a mural design company. The duo has painted over a dozen common spaces, treatment rooms and playrooms in Children's Hospital, as well as rooms in private homes all over the city.