"Yes, Virginia" by Michael Sweere

Last year when I saw the billboard over Highway 62 touting the World’s Largest Gingerbread House, I found myself longing for the annual “Teeny Tiny” show at the now defunct Outsiders and Others gallery. What is it about the sheer capacity to occupy space that’s supposed to impress us? I may be the only person in the Twin Cities who still hasn’t set foot in the Mall of America (which hosted the aforementioned gingerbread McMansion last year) -- it’s not that I’m deliberately boycotting the place, it’s just that the large size makes my feet ache just thinking about it, and I’ve yet to hear of anything there to draw me in.

But a recent e-mail from artist Amy Rice announcing her participation in a show of miniatures at the Fox Tax Gallery, 503 First Ave. NE, did entice me to navigate the maze of acute-angled intersections where Northeast meets Southeast in Minneapolis. And I was delighted and amused to discover that the ironically named show These Elves Went to Art School featured a few artists from Outsiders (who didn’t go to art school) as well as many other well-established local artists (who did).

I was sorry I couldn’t make it to the opening on Saturday night, but I did get over there on Friday for a sneak preview. I was impressed with the way the curator arranged the works, for surely one of the challenges of exhibiting small art, especially when there are more than 200 pieces that are nearly all the same size, is to avoid either a cluttered or monotonous appearance. The Fox Tax folks get around both those problems by clustering small groups of works of differing depths so that the thickest ones are in the center, and they’re arranged horizontally -- sometimes in a single line, sometimes a few rows -- resulting in a textural rhythm to the overall exhibition that leads the viewer naturally from one grouping to the next.

Each cluster shows works from several of the 35 or so participating artists, so you’re not looking at all the Amy Rices in one group and then nothing but Michael Sweere in the next, for example. This juxtaposing of different artists’ works invites the viewer to compare and relate the different works to each other, suggesting a conversation that, combined with the intimacy of the small scale, draws the viewer in to interact (visually, mentally) with the art, as though joining in on a conversation.

The works themselves are pure delight, and in many cases, if you are at all familiar with the artist’s larger works, it’s really a joy to see how they tackle the challenge of the 4 x 4-inch size limit. It's also interesting that, although it's rare to find square compositions among these artists' usual works (or any artist's usual works, for that matter), most of them are 4 x 4 exactly, which has the effect of making them resemble tiles.

While some, like Yuri Arajs, for example, produced miniature versions of their signature motifs -- Arajs’s “Monolith” is playfully shrunken here -- others used the opportunity to do something a little different.

Woodcut printmaker Nick Wroblewski has made many prints of modest proportion before, but the ones he created for this show are less boldly linear than much of his other work and rely more on form and suggestion; still nature-themed, as is his bent, but with a subtle touch of abstraction and in a monochromatic soft grey. It appears that he responded to the challenge of this particular show as an opportunity to try something a little different.

Jennifer Davis’s paintings look to me like thumbnails of larger works -- as if she selected the parts that could stand alone. They suggest that there’s something more to this story, but it’s up to you to decide what lies beyond the boundaries of the canvas. At the same time, they do feel like satisfyingly complete works in themselves.

Michael Sweere’s mixed-media compositions contain some the usual elements of his geometric assemblages -- like nails, lots of nails -- but these use more pictorial components and combine paper and tin rather than wood. That plus the size result in a different feel than his larger works.

I could go on (if I had taken notes or was familiar with more of these artists’ works), but you get the idea, I hope. This isn’t “honey I shrunk the art” and it isn’t art reduced to precious tchotchkes. This is art of the same high quality we have come to expect from these fine artists, but with a creative twist on a reduced scale.

The other benefit of art in miniature is, of course, that the price is also smaller. It presents the opportunity for the would-be art collector of modest means to aquire the works of several of our very accomplished local artists, or to give some original art as a gift.

The exhibition will be on display through Dec. 31, with a holiday reception on Dec. 15, 5-11 p.m. See Fox Tax Gallery for hours and location.