Friday, May 26, 2006

SUN.MAY.28

You know those dreams where you're trying to accomplish something important yet impossible? Maybe there's a supernaturally good sunset, but your Play-Doh camera keeps crumbling apart, or a once-in-a-lifetime sexual encounter that you'll see fully, ecstatically realized just as soon as you find the magic toothbrush that'll get this Nike logo off your neck (by the time you're done, your lover is a cardboard Eskimo).

Just a bit of this sensation has been ported to the material world in the form of Obstacle Art. It's a dreamy, playable miniature-golf installation at Commerce Street Studios sponsored by Todd VonBastiaans and Whirlygig, a non-profit arts promotion group headed by Cindy Funkhouser. Twelve local artists have collaborated on nine themed holes, from Candyland gumdrops to a significantly heavier memorial to Iraq war dead with combat helmet bumpers.

Like in those tasky dreams, there's a fun/horror contradiction captured by some of these designs. A Soviet-themed hole features V.I. Lenin in a Scotch-plaid tam, hoisting up a driver, as if to say, "Ach! Mere putters won't avenge the blood of the proletariat!" Unlike those dreams, each of these pieces at least offers an attainable goal -- a hole. Sink the last putt, then wake up. Dave Surratt, desurratt@cox.net

Obstacle Art Course
Thu.-Sun.
Commerce Street Studios
1551 South Commerce St.
437-2300
Free