The University of New England’s Art Gallery is one of Portland’s best architectural nuggets in no small part because of the way it opens up from the main floor into the surprisingly spacious upper level.

Rarely has anyone used the relationship between the two levels as well as Alison Hildreth for her current installation of hundreds of suspended glass puppets, containers and lenses.

It has a magical feel in the sense of children’s fantasy literature: Dozens of clear glass puppets with paper wings soaring 25 feet into the air; lenses daring you to peer through them; beakers of black sand in alchemical poses; mineral-filled hourglasses; ribbons of ancient-seeming script, bottled genie-like; wooden marionette handles; light bulbs; and sleek drips of black among the otherwise all-clear glass.

All this floats and twists on silver wires over a circular black pool reflecting these legions back up to the firmament.

The installation shouts out no clear meaning, but beckons the scrutiny of fascination. The children at the opening reception certainly got this, and usually stood staring — transfixed as though seeing a Christmas tree for the first time.

But much of the appeal is its dark flavor. It’s the stuff of dreams and fairy tales — not Disney, but E.T.A. Hoffman or the Brothers Grimm. It’s at least as much shadow as sprightly magic.

Most of the prints and drawings in “The Feathered Hand” use the visual logic of architectural and archeological site diagrams. They look like maps showing fortresses built over forgotten catacombs, citadels, buried cities and ancient walls. They seem to reveal the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, snaking endlessly through time.

The drawings are handsomely framed. The rice paper marked with pencil, ink and wax has the permanent feel of ancient and unique historical documents. Moreover, most of the works are long and slender like scrolls.

“Forthrights & Meanders #10” is typically long and slender (56 by 12 inches), with Hildreth’s organically wandering linear logic and a wizened feel of ancient ink and foxing stains. However, it goes past the bulwarked fortresses and buried paths of long-forgotten cities of the other topographical works.

In addition to the simple schematic of a cathedral, we see a labyrinth — the first of which was designed, according to legend, by Daedalus, to contain King Minos’ cursed son, the Minotaur. Daedalus is most famous as the maker of wax and feathered wings he used to escape imprisonment by Minos. Daedalus’ son, Icarus, famously flew too close to the sun and fell to his death because the wax melted.

Icarus is the very image of the dream — fantasy and fear — of flying. The connection to the glass puppets’ wings is inescapable. It is this solid connection (as well as to Da Vinci’s designs) that keeps the installation clear of any angelic reference and closer to the world of human imagination.

While fueled by fantasy, Hildreth’s work is fundamentally grounded. Most of the imagery is the ground itself. Because of this, the alchemical references, for example, don’t flee to Faustian flaw or the moral sting of Daedalus’ hubris. Instead, Hildreth sees a great inventor in a child’s imagination, and sweetly reminds us that transcendent journeys begin (and sometimes end) with baby steps.

Showing concurrently at June Fitzpatrick are earlier paintings by Hildreth. It’s a strong show, and it’s particularly interesting reading backwards from the context of her newest work.

Most of the paintings exude a searching but appealing spiritual mood. Some are landscapes with spiritual paths, others float towards abstract ether, and yet others distill themselves around totemic visions.

Two of the largest works — canvases from about 2001 — are the clear precursors to “Feathered Hand.” These hint of a darker, moral reading of the large installation.

“Freefall” features the doubled figure of Phaeton from a famous print by Hendrick Goltius (1558-1667). Phaeton’s story is parallel to Icarus’: despite insistent warnings, Phaeton flew his father Helios’ sun chariot and was killed.

In Hildreth’s canvas, the Phaeton figures, along with chariot wheels, have fallen through space across which 10 disembodied hands (in legible yoga mudra gestures) hold drooping lines of text. Also hanging are repeating images of a votive statue peeking from the hexagonal forms’ honeycomb grid. The surface is varied and rich with oil paint, varnish and the collaged images and text. Her specific (but obscure) references make this work far more pained and impenetrably dense than her more recent pictures.

My favorite works are Hildreth’s new “Imperium” series. These are woodcuts in which the artist varies many of the basic forms from the drawings: bulwarked fortresses, redoubts, lost catacombs and old foundations, stacked over each other. The compositions are built of subtle layers: black over gray over cream, lighter gray on parchment maybe with one punctuating bolt of red.

That the forms in the “Imperium” prints repeat only makes them more interesting. They could be different moments in history or alternate outcomes. These are very handsome and refined, and it is their confidence that takes them past Hildreth’s other works for me.

Hildreth has only one painting in “Visual Poetry” at the Portland Public Library (“Word Warriors”), but its scale, ambition and agonizingly writhing power put it in a class beyond its neighbors from some of Portland’s best galleries.

With her works now on view in three shows, Hildreth has easily made the case she is an important Maine artist. Whether you have a literary take on the world or the swirling imagination of a child, she has something in store for you. 

Freelance writer Daniel Kany is an art historian who lives in Cumberland. He can be contacted at:

dankany@gmail.com

 

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