Resnick is one of 18 women whose works appear in "Mature Content: Women Artists Look at Aging," at the Autumn Leaves Gallery until November 28th. This is the Boomer generation and beyond as it confronts aging in ways sad and humorous, metaphorical and with hard-edged realism.
      Patricia Brown fashions totems to honor the social role of elders in her "Grandmother Totems," two highly imaginative mixed-media sculptures that sit on pedestals and are topped by sepia-toned photographs of elderly women. They have miniature dressmakers' forms for torsos.
      On one, the form is covered with non-interlocking puzzle pieces and an old-fashioned brass keyhole plate. The key hangs from a chain around her neck. At her feet are multiple spools, not of thread but of text. Whether these are stories her family tells about her or are her own stories doesn't matter. Like the puzzle pieces, they suggest a long, perhaps well-lived, life - a life too complex to form a single picture or a single tale. Both totems use animal bones to suggest the deep place where spirit resides.
      In "Walking Through," another mixed-media sculpture, Rebecca Godin (who curated the show) uses an old steamer trunk to evoke life's passages, as indicated by the piece's subtitle, "(Autumn Leaves Winter Comes)". Partially open, it hesitatingly reveals self-portraits lining each interior half. One of the portraits is behind "bars" of silk ribbon, suggesting the difficulty of moving beyond how we are seen physically, in terms of age, sex, race. Dried leaves - still beautiful - lie along a bottom edge. Travel stickers and an open passport belonging to the artist are affixed to the outside of the trunk. The artist seems to suggest that we are the sum of all these things - that all of our ages and experiences coexist, as they do on and in this scratched and weathered trunk.
      In the drawing "(Can't Always) Be Prepared: Young at Heart," a seated woman bridges two portraits. She is Maxine, alter ego of Resnick. She looks into a mirror at what is behind her, a standing figure with the superimposed head of Marilyn Monroe, icon of eternal youth and beauty. In the left half of the diptych, the model stands as if behind a transparency of pointers, each identifying, all too helpfully, such betrayals as "thunder thighs," "liver spots," and "chicken neck." The seated woman more clearly sees herself as she once looked rather than how she looks now. The work reminds us of how many times we've heard ourselves or another say, "Whose reflection is that in the window?"
      Other pieces have less to say, perhaps, but add welcome notes of humor or transcendence. Botticelli's famous "Venus on a Half-Shell" is reincarnated yet again in Annie Campbell's "Venus in Blue Jeans," a giclee print. Barbara Mink's "Fallen Petals" and "View from the Monastery," both oils on canvas, move beyond physicality and narration to places of pure meditation.
      Even allowing for a great range of insights into aging, some works here seem too loosely tethered to the theme. They look as if they ended up in the show not because the artists set out to plumb the depths of a topic rich for reflection, but because, after the fact, they came closer to fitting the topic than did other works the artists had on hand. If the show continues next year, which would be its third, perhaps it will be tighter.
      Last, but not least - for it is the most affecting and one of the best-realized works in the show - is Aafke Steenhuis's quilt "5:49 P.M." Near the center of the fabric is a thick tree around which swirl bits of glass-like shards and pieces of red. Black ribbons hang loosely from the bottom left corner, which is partially burned away. The work represents a tragic accident that involved three local youth.             Simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking, the quilt draws one in, pushes one back. Where Brown's grandmother totems celebrate lives that are full and long, Steenhuis's quilt mourns those who never get there. Inadvertently, perhaps, it's a lens through which the rest of the show can be seen - a reminder that aging, for so many of us, is a gift.