Judith Page at Luise Ross

Art in America, April, 2005 by Edward Leffingwell

The latch and padded binding of a childhood diary seem scarcely stout enough to protect the year of confidences entrusted to its pages. One such binding, splayed and coated, was the central image of Judith Page's The Memoirs of a Beast (2002-03), 180 pages of sporadic, actual diary entries written in the round, childlike hand of the grade-school student she once was. Altered with gesso, acrylic paint, black and flesh-pink tar gel as well as collage, the pages of her diary were installed along a wall in a four-part grid. Many entries are scrawled in pencil. There are a few blank pages and a number of pasted-on black-and-white snapshots and souvenirs that help convey the era: a photograph of Eisenhower addressing a crowd, something about boys and a jitterbug contest at a sock hop, ticket stubs. It appears to be the mid 1950s. "Dear Diary," she writes, "Tom loves me I think. I'm not sure about Bob."

Page, a Brooklyn-based artist with a 25-year exhibition history who currently teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art, also created a suite of works on the reconstruction of these disassembled pages. A round-eared Mickey Mouse silhouette on one entry is transformed into a snarling, toothy rat as Page traces the gradual loss of innocence that creeps like a shadow over the schoolgirl's days. These works are primarily based on an imaginative reconfiguration of toy animals and the memory of the Disney Mouseketeers.

In contrast to the diary entries, four works from "The Mouseketeers in Iraq" (2004) picture several of the original TV moppets and their written history as concieved by Page in our time of present danger. In each of the four 30-by-22-inch framed portrait busts in tar gel and graphite on paper, the figures are uniformed in white jersey turtlenecks, their moldering faces creased with horrific, toothy grins. Among them are the famous Annette (after Abu Ghraib), her pal Doreen (DAV), who in fact had entertained the troops in Vietnam (here the title links Doreen to Disabled American Veterans), and colleague Bobby (in Baghdad). All are recognizable by the names emblazoned on their jerseys. Each background is obsessively inscribed with barely-readable graphite ruminations. The inscription attributed to Tommy includes "was a pleasure" and "I had never felt."

Small, pinkish sculptures (2004) not more than 24 inches in any dimension are part of "365 Dumb Days," in progress since 1996. Each involves dated and named small objects suspended from the gallery ceiling, attached to a wall or stashed in a corner. The spectacularly nasty rodent of July 1 (Rat and Artichoke) hung from its tail, clawed feet outstretched, an artichoke protruding from behind it, bright and seemingly still dripping from its plunge in the artist's tarry pink. The perfect, gleaming rosy putto of February 4 (Beast Eyes and Cherub) rides on an asteroid of the same sticky hue like a glowing cloud by Tintoretto. There are 50 such wonderments in Page's inventory by now, and counting, one day at a time.