Needless to say, I was delighted when I discovered that PaMdora was going to be the focus of a one-woman show at Drury's Pool Art Center Gallery this winter. So I went to see her a few days ago, and my reunion with PaMdora was everything I expected and more. She's looking great and is in just as many predicaments as ever.
PaMdora is the creation and alter ego of Springfield artist Pam RuBert, and this show, titled "The Perils of PaMdora" is a wonderful art quilt exhibit full of color, humor and talent. It's just the antidote to a dreary winter's day, although you probably won't want to cuddle up with PaMdora like you would a conventional quilt. She's the type of girl you'd rather put on a pedestal and admire — or better yet, hang her on the wall.
RuBert, according to information at her Web site www.pamrubert.com, came to quilting rather recently after a life of drawing and cartooning, and this background certainly shows in her quilts. PaMdora is cartoon-like herself, and the situations she gets herself into are just the sort you'd see in the funny pages.
In the Drury exhibit, RuBert features 13 of her large works and a few smaller ones, only a couple of which don't feature PaMdora. Otherwise, this wacky, one-breasted (and which breast it is changes from work to work, by the way) heroine is abducted by aliens, comes out of a birthday cake, practices her yoga and shows dismay at the way everyone in Springfield seems to be talking on a cell phone.
PaMdora also steps in dog poop, encounters Captain Nemo in the bathtub, goes through the stuff in her purse and strings Christmas lights while her dog bites the electric cord.
This is an exhibit heavily laced with gentle, self-deprecating humor, and that's a lot of what makes it so appealing. We may never have been in a flying saucer or jumped out of a cake, but who among us hasn't struggled with Christmas lights, found things we had forgotten about in purse or pockets or fumed at someone yakking on a cell phone to the detriment of their driving?
PaMdora's world is our world, but our world hyped up on steroids, especially color steroids. Everything is in bright, saturated rainbow colors — no subtlety here. The aliens, for instance, are orange, their spaceship is blue and the ground beneath them is green. It's all over the top, but in this case, being over the top is a plus.
Just as interesting as RuBert's actual works in the Drury exhibit is one corner of the gallery where the artist has set up a facsimile of her studio, which is actually located in the old Hallam's peanut butter factory at Glenstone and Bergman. A work titled "Late Date" is in progress, and it's truly fascinating because it's a sort of "how she does it" look into RuBert's technique. There are small drawings of the entire work and of various elements of it, as well as a life-size drawing, done in horizontal bands and stitched together, of the entire quilt.
There are also lots of artistic elements within this room — for instance, there's a sewing machine and a bathroom sink with an open cabinet above it. Everything in the cabinet, from jars of nail polish to a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, are in pink, a color echoed in the quilt RuBert is making and in other elements throughout the room. We're looking an artist's studio here, but we're also looking at a work of art itself.
This appealing show is just what you need to overcome the winter blahs, and because of the Christmas holidays, you have until the end of January to see it. So get out from under grandma's log cabin quilt and go see what's being done in the world of art quilts these days. You'll be glad you did.