Philadelphia Weekly
October 2-9, 2005

by Roberta Fallon


It's no secret that I'm a fan of Ben Woodward's art, now on view at Spector.

I was hooked in 1999 when I saw the then-25-year-old artist's four-color screen-printed posters of imaginary lost dogs and cats on boarded-up buildings and walls all over the city. Woodward's wheatpasted urban-beautification project was wild, cheery and wonderful, and I've been writing about his work ever since.

The artist no longer plasters his art on the street, and his gallery work-printmaking and gouache-painting cartoons in the manner of Indian miniatures-has been getting stronger and bolder. In his third solo with Spector the artist bursts through to a new level of maturity, delicacy and clarity of vision.

Woodward's craftsmanship is superb. He paints on wood panels (cigar boxes, found wood and hollow doors that he saws into smaller pieces). His "every blade of grass must show" depiction coupled with the stylized body gestures and a new bright palette evokes pages from an exotic children's storybook, one with sad-sack characters and a message about love and loss. Think Snuffy without his mom or Big Bird with a hangover. Some artists flee from putting too much of themselves in their work. Woodward, now a dad, nails his heart right up there on the wall in works that are achingly lovely.

The artist's trademark animal-human hybrids have furry skin that unzips like clothing and tops that come off and can be traded in what looks like a game of musical heads. The crew strikes iconic poses, some of them religious, as in A Time to Share, which evokes the Pieta. As with the stylized Indian miniature paintings the artist so loves, the characters interact with each other with a delicacy of touch that's not of this world.

In fact, everybody seems to live on a mountaintop so bare that there's nothing but these creatures and their bird friends. The message is clear: Focus on your family, focus on yourself, get your head straight, work on your heart and be with each other.

It's a message both very close to Sesame Street and, with its undertow of sorrow, as far away as Hades.