Under The Wings of Artemis

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Blocker professes a love of secret languages and obscure codes, but allows that the autobiographical slant of her work may sometimes deter any specific deciphering success. If Dinner at Café Sporte defies decoding, Blocker’s Residence, featuring interlocking geometric patterns representing bricks, tile, patchwork quilts, textiles and other home-related items, is laden with references that are relatively easy to unravel.

Blocker seems to be content to let the codes fall where they may, sometimes offering a host of clues that will enrich the meaning of a book, other times letting the visual beauty of the book alone carry the day.

Residence
Mare Blocker

In Dinner at Café Sporte, Mare Blocker highlights a jaunty sense of design that combines sewn-on novelty beads – some shaped like “X’s” and “O’s,” others taking the form of lobsters, carrots and seahorses, among other things – with hand-drawn, festive patterns. This bright, almost child-like display is set in a simplified wedding cake-like format. An unapologetically cheery work, its up-front joie de vivre seems to forestall any revelation of hidden layers of meaning.

Dinner at Café Sporte
Mare Blocker