Little worlds, expansive stories

Here on the Vineyard, Nancy Slonim Aronie is most associated with the written word. She is a prolific writer with a career as a journalist, with a bimonthly column in The MV Times, and three published books, and she has inspired countless participants to pen their truth through her Chilmark Writing Workshops. 

But for the past 25 years, Aronie has also pursued another art form. “When I was 8, and my sister was 12, I said, ‘I’m going to be an artist.’ And she said, ‘No. I’m going to be an artist. You have to be a writer.’ I did become a writer, but I also became an artist.”

Aronie’s keen wit, incisive commentary on the world around us, and sense of playful joy all intertwine in her compelling small artworks. Each is a tiny world unto itself, with visual clues that encourage us to create stories, thereby becoming collaborators in her mixed-media pieces: “I love that people bring stories to them. I wouldn’t presume to tell them what they are.”

Unsurprisingly, Aronie has a way with her titles. These often come after she creates the art, which can feel intuitive, as if the muse flows through her. She builds little scenarios we take in at a glance, such as the tough, overall-clad woman sitting on an enormous, modern, Mondrian-like chair, legs spread, holding a power tool in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Aronie’s title immediately says it all: “First He Tells Me He Wants Blue. Then He Tells Me He Wants Red. Then He Says, ‘OK, Add a Little Bit of Yellow.’ I Swear He Drove Me Back to Smoking.” Aronie remarks, “I love her power. She’s tough, sexy, and beautiful, and she knows how to take care of herself. She doesn’t need a husband to do it.”
Aronie creates an immensely amusing small diorama in an old wooden cheese box in “Sorry — Rapunzel Just Left.” Here, a bright blue helicopter lands just outside Rapunzel’s empty house, and a hard-hatted man seems to be informing the pilot he’s missed his chance to rescue the damsel in distress.

The artist creates wry literary allusions with her “Cats on a Hot Tin Roof,” in which three bathing beauties sun themselves on the corrugated tin roof of an old bird feeder. A bit of a drama queen himself, no doubt Tennessee Williams would have gotten a kick out of the witty reference to his searing play.

Aronie’s way with words can be seen as well in the little bits of text she includes on the back or bottom of her pieces. Turn over “Remington Writer,” in which a gray-suited man stands, looking off into the distance next to a typewriter, and a smile will come to your lips when you read her line: “The problem isn’t that I can’t think of where to begin; the problem is they’ve discontinued the damned typewriter ribbon!”

This little scene is set atop a piece of Lucite, which evokes Aronie’s past. She and her husband Joel, who sometimes helps with the physical construction of the work (such as the metal poles in “Remington Writer”), ran a Lucite business together, fabricating bath accessories and furniture. During this time, Aronie says, “I made Lucite boxes, and I’d put small dolls or other small items in them, giving them away as birthday presents.”

“I almost never hesitate. They seem to tell me where they want to be,” Aronie says of the elements in her artwork. She collects one-of-a-kind items that catch her eye at antique stores, from friends, on Etsy, at tag sales, and even on the ground. We see the latter, for instance, in her solo bathing figures in quahog shells. Sometimes something speaks to her when she acquires it: “I had an elephant phase where I bought a bunch of them.” In “A Blessing on Your House,” for instance, an ornate brass Indian elephant on a Lucite stand faces a red-haired man. The creature, with trunk raised, is blessing the gentleman with gold glitter that has rained down around him.

“I have a bunch of items, and maybe the first thing I’ll do is fingerpaint on a piece of wood or on Lucite, and then look for a person to go with it. Or sometimes I imagine the whole thing. I picture it and know what I want,” Aronie explains about her process. This is the case for her series, “The Last Gasp,” in which she affixes a tiny male figure, back to us, onto a board painted in shades of gray, white, and black. The vast monochromatic sea overwhelms the human form. “I called it ‘The Last Gasp’ because I think these angry, angry guys just know that it’s over. They are doing every mean, horrible thing to the world … to keep hold of their power. I have a little compassion for them, like if they would just turn around, I could take care of you. I would be happy to be nice to you. These guys are lost, and just don’t know how to be real, loving, and vulnerable. And they think if you’re a guy, you must man up and be tough. It’s so much pressure.”

Sometimes, an incident in Aronie’s life serves as inspiration, such as with “Sister Mary Margaret Promises Not to Cut Off Your Ponytail.” Here, a nun is set against a simple, abstract landscape-like composition rendered in a Santa Fe–colored palette. “I’ve had a lot of Catholic friends who take my writing workshop, and one of them wrote a story about a nun cutting her ponytail off right in class. Still, I lived near a convent and got to know a few of the women, and I feel very connected to them somehow.”

Aronie’s poignant piece featuring a female and male tennis player in the middle of a game, “We Stopped Keeping Score Because Love Is All There Is,” reflects the artist’s warm, open heart and the large impact her small, delightful artworks can have.

Nancy Slonin Aronie’s art will be on view, along with works by Cindy Kane, Whitney Cleary, and Marthe Rowen, from June 26 to July 8 at the Granary Gallery in West Tisbury. For more information and images of Aronie’s art, visit bit.ly/GG_NancySAronie.