cartoon | girl | unfinished

People of a certain age are asked to remember three words at a doctor’s appointment to measure cognitive fitness. Entering her “third act,” ceramic sculptor Pamela Belding locks these three words together to describe a collection of over 35 works. A former animator trained at Disney school (Cal Arts), Belding has an amazing recollection of cartoons from the 40s-60s. She worked on a Canadian (hand-drawn) animation education series while living in LA. In the golden age of the Twin Cities commercial film industry, she worked as the first paintbox artist and special effects designer for television and film in the Twin Cities, as well as the Spiderman Saturday morning open in the 90s. In these sculptures, she considers her early icons, Disney heroines, contemplating what may have happened to the adolescent Snow White as she lived her life and grew old. She has taken animal totems and created new guardians and superheroes (no capes involved). As “girl” describes Belding’s gender, she is aware of the gaping omission of women artists historically from her uneasy place in a male-dominated film industry, and consideration of her past female icons in animation—which reinforces any and all cultural stereotyping. She has constructed an often humorous series of collage work in consideration of W.H. Janson’s History of Art—which educated many if not most who studied art from the 60s into the 90s— leaving women completely out of art history until 1986. Timely and difficult discussions about race, gender, economic disparities have shown the frustrating effect omission from history can leave on groups within our culture. Janson’s omissions were simply within past decades, but, of course, they are generations old.  Several of her sculptural pieces explore the idea of androgyny—whether to draw a line between male and female, or simply accept the gender spectrum. A large female deer sprouts antlers (Evolution), and a head holds both male and female faces (Fluid). Releasing boundaries on what once was culturally acceptable draws nearer as we grapple with fears and prejudice. The exhibit is “unfinished,” because, after a life as a single mother and breadwinner, Belding is finally able to live as a full-time maker. This exhibition is a celebration of gratitude for what has been given, and for the making that lies ahead. Belding currently has a 1977 experimental film screening in the Mediatheque at the Walker Art Center.