Drawing inspiration from European folk traditions, Tole painting is a technique for decorating metal tableware to transform nondescript household objects into heirlooms. The style was first brought to America by the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch, German immigrants who settled in the region beginning in the 17th century. In her “Lead Sister” exhibit, Victoria Smith, a native of Pennsylvania, where the aesthetic is still deeply ingrained in saloons and roadside inns, borrows from Tole’s visual vocabulary to foster conversations about craftsmanship, skills and, above all, the integrated hierarchy. in the notion of art object.
Family is central to Tole as a subject and target audience; the objects generally present domestic motives or jokes inside. In The Smiths (all works 2023), the artist renders a plump, bouncy, bright red love heart in oil paint on an oversized cut-out wood panel. All over its surface, childish black lettering reads “The Smith’s”. It is easy to imagine this kind of trinket hanging on a door handle or on the wall of a kitchen: a whole family contained in a single heart. Like with Share horizons, the watering can of tulips mounted on the opposite wall, is a painting on painting. The same applies to garden of love, Smith applies oil directly to the floor of the gallery, creating a trompe l’oeil of two sketchbooks whose pages are penciled in with designs of flowers and small maps of housing estates. The squiggles wait as if momentarily abandoned, but the flatness reveals the image for what it is: a painting, invested with a different, more self-aware charm.
The works of “Lead Sister” are close to your heart. The compositions seem familiar and recognize the domestic but do not feel inherently at home. They read more like an investigation of folk art and kitsch as a way to grasp the ties that bind.
