Artists, innovators, technologists and educators alike bandy the phrase “Think outside the box” with such frequency that it’s all but lost its meaning. What about its opposite, “Think inside the box”? Our first response may be to balk at the idea that any worthy notion or revelation could be born inside the proverbial box. And yet that’s precisely what artist and gallerist Jeanne Nikolai Olivieri posits with her current interactive installation. Comprised of three six-by-six-foot rooms erected within her studio, “Think Inside the Box” is, in the artist’s words, “a metaphor for that inner place we go to when we take creative risks. It also represents the playful creative spaces we built as children, like a tent made of blankets, or a shelter made of branches.” The idea is sound. Spend even a few minutes writing or drawing with the materials available inside, and you’ll agree that enclosure and isolation can be tremendous boons to meditation, creation and revelation.
One year in development, “Think Inside the Box” opened this past Gallery Night and has already received many contributions. Visitors are asked to turn off cellphones, choose a box to visit and leave any artifacts created while inside within a depository provided by Nikolai Olivieri, who then hangs or scrapbooks them into the environment.
Each box has a distinct ethos. The Retreat features a woodland motif in its vintage forest wallpaper and rough wood furnishings. A tremendous diversity of messages and images adorn clotheslines hung against the walls, ranging from “Help what am I doing” to “You are beloved.” Although Nikolai Olivieri leaves signatures to visitors’ discretion, most works seem to be anonymous—a poignant reinforcement of the universal humanity this exhibit champions.
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The Lounge is a brilliantly colorful environment with a geometric theme found in the square latticework ceiling and a door curtain made from strings of bottle caps. Here current contributions present an explosion of color and many mandala-like images on the round science filters provided as sketching material.
Finally, The Drawing Room offers a stately yet snug atmosphere with an elegant theatrical door curtain and ivory-and-mahogany color scheme. Visitors sit at a handsome rounded writing desk and create artifacts that find their way into a scrapbook. Contributions thus far include many extended pieces of writing, including a profound exposition on combating constant worry by “creating pieces of beautiful every day” and the pithy statement “Less ‘I’m sorry’/ More ‘I love you.’”
The power of this exhibition comes from the diversity of its contributors, who seem to range widely in age, style, mood and native language. What image or statement will take form inside the boxes next? Visit and make it so.
Through Sept. 16 at J Nikolai Art in the Marshall Building, 207 E. Buffalo St., Suite 602. For gallery hours, visit jnikolaiart.com or email jnoart@gmail.com to make an appointment.
