Entering Untameable Gallery at Lucy Dahl’s new Edgartown location is a bit like walking on the wild side. Her edgy photographs grace the walls while candles, silverware with cheeky words, T shirts with sassy sayings such as “I am Mrs. Robinson,” and note cards with slightly naughty messages are elegantly displayed throughout.
Showing her work was not originally on Dahl’s radar. She says that about three years ago, she was originally planning on putting her copious number of photographs in an album. But a friend urged Dahl to go downtown and look for a space, and if there was something there, to lease it. Sure enough, that’s what happened. At her original Dock Street location, she explains, “I put the photos up on the wall and thought, It’s so empty I want to put funny things in there as well … things that nobody else has. Everything I have here is what I have in my house. It’s basically an extension of it.”
Island photographer Alison Shaw has been Dahl’s mentor for years, and is the one who encouraged her to find her distinct voice. In describing her work, which is far-reaching in subject matter, Dahl says, “I try to capture what the naked eye doesn’t see. The wonderful thing about a lens is that so much happens. We miss so much. I’m also trying to do things that nobody has done. It’s very hard on this Island to shoot a photograph that hasn’t been taken before.”
For Dahl, creating art is elemental to her being. “I love taking photographs, because my brain is very active, and I have the ability to think of many different things all at the same time. But when I’m shooting, I am in the present moment, and working on what I want to create. My brain isn’t thinking about anything else. For me, that is bliss.”
The power and beauty of women are central to Dahl’s work. She sets up inventive situations using models to create visually evocative imagery, which is amplified by her large-size format. There’s a magical work, “Seated Swinging,” where a young woman in a pink tutu, back to us, sits on a swing underwater. Bubbles spray across the composition, imbuing the photograph with an effervescent air. Dahl has a special fondness for both shooting underwater and swings. “There’s something about underwater where everything changes,” she says. For this piece, they tied the swing to the side of a boat, lowered it into the water, put the woman in a tutu, and then added weights on both her and Dahl.
She uses the same ballerina costume in the immensely funny “Tutu Much!” A tall woman, long hair streaming behind her, and two children on either side — all clad in tutus — stands atop a wall with the ocean beyond. Our eyes immediately go to the woman with her hands on cocked hips, looking down at the young girl just to her left. Although this little one too has her hands in the same position, her stance is one of consternation, as she stares belligerently at the boy to her left — the only male in the group — seemingly annoyed that he too should sport such a prized accoutrement. It is only when our eyes drift to the far right that we notice that the girl glances back, catching us as we stare at the enigmatic scenario.
Careful looking also reveals more in “Summer Rain.” Initially, we see a woman from behind, standing on a dock, looking out over the calm water. The scene is black and white except for her startlingly bright yellow raincoat, which comes down just below her bottom, exposing her crossed bare legs. She holds an umbrella aloft, which at first seems to be hand drawn in with black marker with contrasting white raindrops falling across it. In fact, Dahl manufactured the rain, using a hose to spray the scene and create the illusion when, if we look carefully, we can’t see any drops disturbing the water.
Dahl posed an overall-clad woman, blond hair spilling down her naked back, on top of a camper-like bus parked at the bottom of the path leading through the dunes. It is a quintessential summer image that immediately recalls the late 1970s, when Dahl first started coming to the Vineyard. The exact opposite season is her black-and-white photograph of frighteningly large, roiling waves as they come crashing down on South Beach that Dahl took during a nor’easter. As you linger on the magnificent force of nature, the photograph dissolves into abstract textures and plays of light and dark tones.
Dahl’s sense of fun comes out in an extreme close-up of a piglet poking its snout through two slabs of wood. She went to Nip n’ Tuck Farm to shoot their free-range young piglets, and this little fellow stayed behind when the others left through the gap that let the creatures come and go as they pleased. “This one didn’t follow the others, but just sat there and posed for me. It was quite fabulous,” Dahl says.
Quite fabulous is what you get at Untameable, where Dahl has created an appealing playground for the mind and eye.
Untameable Gallery, 20 South Summer St., Edgartown. Open 8 am to 10 pm July and August; 10 am to 6 pm September through December.
