Eleven emerging artists! One night only!

In 2003, I was a graduate student in Savannah, GA at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). That year we often held group exhibitions around the corner from my place at the house where my friends Magen, Dana, and Michael lived. On the first Friday of every month, we would quickly transform their common living space into a gallery space, and 28 E. 41st Street became Gallery 28.

Curiosities was one of these group exhibitions, and it occurred twenty years ago today. This exhibition was different than our usual exhibitions because it featured art made by cats. That’s right, all artwork in the exhibition was presented as a cat’s creation. Included were titles and statements translated and written by each cat’s owner. We pushed the joke as far as we could. Was all of the artwork really made by cats? No, only a couple of pieces were, most notably, the installation work “Five 40’s” featured on the postcard. It was created by Sweet Jimmy, who was one of Ken and Amy Miller’s cats.

Other than myself, I know Magen Peigelbeck, Dana Crossan, Ken Miller and Tarin Eicher were involved. Unfortunately, I cannot recall all who participated.

Why did we do this? Mostly it was to mock SCAD, who was simultaneously having an exhibition celebrating dogs. We weren’t anti-dog, we were anti-dumb. At the time, we felt our university was promoting an unchallenging series of theme-based exhibitions. Curiosities was our response; an exhibition that wasn’t cat art but art made by cats!

In addition to the art, we made a litter box replica cake. It looked very authentic and tasted great. Cake as art. We were ahead of our time.