Best of Show

Fuller surveys art scene - indoors and out - for the pick of New England

Excerpt

Sometimes, though, the installation charms. Consider the trio of works in which feet are emblems of suffering and toil, the essence of man's meeting with the earth. One is Paricia Carrigan's "My Father's Feet", a nervous and intuitive charcoal drawing in which the feet are hard to find. Another is David Newton"s "Lead Feet", a sculpture composed of skinny, steep wooden stairs with a battered lead boot on each. Sized too small to ever conquer the tall steps, the boots become symbols of courage. The last is Dana Salvo's compelling photograph, "Foot", in which the skeleton of a lower leg is encased in a rotting burlap sack pinned to a splintery plank that rests on a bed of brittle starw. "Foot" is part of Salvo's documentation of buriel practices in other countries, in this case the custom of exhuming bodies and placing their bodies beside the tomb.