Artistic Choices> New UM Exhibit “Wake Up Little Susie” tackles the complex issues of abortion

ORONO — In America, our political views must be boiled down small enough to fit on a bumper sticker: “Vote No on Question 2.” “Save the Whales.” “Impeach Clinton.”

We’re accustomed to picking sides that come pre-packaged like frozen food. Complex historical context and multiple viewpoints aren’t often part of controversy. After all, what’s the point of a subtle bearnaise sauce on a boxed chicken dinner?

As an issue, abortion has leant itself well to debate in convenient, bite-size portions. There are two options: Pro-choice or pro-life. Lost in the yelling and screaming are the gray shades of experience in between.

For that reason, “Wake Up Little Susie,” an exhibit at the University of Maine Museum of Art through March 26, offers rewards to those willing to spend some time with it. Don’t bother visiting the second-floor gallery if you have to rush.

Most of us studied government in school, but few textbooks included a chapter on reproductive politics. As the show by three women artists proves, there’s plenty to be learned about abortion. The structure of the art forces the viewer to slow down, to reflect. The discovery process begins at the gallery threshold with the gut reaction, “Wow, look at this.”

A huge, black-and-white chessboard in the middle of the floor and 19 near life-size, woven wire chess pieces dominate the room. Each wire sculpture corresponds to one of 19 collages hanging on three walls. The pieces represent participants in the abortion war — the social worker, the doctor, the politician, the policeman, the notebook-armed news reporter.

“Wake Up” examines unwanted pregnancy in black and white communities from 1945 to 1965, before the Supreme Court legalized abortion. Artists Cathleen Meadows, Kay Obering and Kathy Hutton collaborated through the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute in Colorado and based their work on two books about race and reproduction by historian Rickie Solinger, a collaborator on the project.

Everyday objects are worked into the structure of each wire figure. Some have hats, beards, eyeglasses or strands of wire bent to suggest a profile. One chess piece wears a necktie; another is draped with a fur stole. The “All-American White Male” is wrapped with rows of cigars and “larger size” condoms. Clocks, buttons, firecrackers and crosses are incorporated elsewhere.

In the four corners of the chessboard are black and white structures representing the ghetto, the maternity home, the court and the abortionist’s office, where tiny trash cans stand beside tiny exam tables with cash fanned out across them. A doll stands dwarfed beside the towering white courthouse.

Descriptive labels placed on the chessboard force viewers to step into play, to become a part of the art. There are no signs asking visitors to keep off.

The education in the exhibit comes from the wall collages, which use paint, photographs, news clippings and actual quotes from doctors, civic leaders, unwed mothers and academic texts. Single, pregnant girls “fell somewhere between criminals and patients” states one of the sections of text. “Like criminals and patients … they were made to disappear.”

Pictures of smiling babies and the Pope leap out here, a black-and-white movie star glamour shot emerges over there. One collage uses a small reproduction of a famous painting, Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden. In another, a quote from a 14-year-old stands out in simple script: “I wish I could cry, but the tears won’t come. No man will want me now.”

Because the subject matter is political, we look instinctively for the artist’s stance, the pro- or anti- that will quickly make everything clear. We look further, fall in deeper by reading accounts of abortion crackdowns in 1950s Portland, Ore. Eventually we see there are no bumper stickers here. There are too many points of view, too much density and overlap for slogans.

If there is a “statement,” it is that women have been pawns in the past, at the mercy of power players who stripped their human shape to make political currency. Here, the artists do the same to politicians, rendering them as empty wire vessels hung with human props. At the same time, “Wake Up Little Susie” gives voices and identities back to the women of the past.

“The point is not who is right and who is wrong,” one visitor wrote in the notebook provided for public comments on the show. “The point is the people who feel they can decide what is right and wrong for everyone. A choice is exactly that … a choice. It is easier to make it illegal, but a choice is better.”

In the same way, slogan-slinging is easier than a careful, thorough investigation of a complex topic. “Wake Up Little Susie” is refreshing, and revealing, because its creators have thought long and hard about abortion. The show demands the same of its public.

“Wake Up Little Susie” with “Warnings,” video art by Lisa Link, will be shown 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday through March 26 at the Museum of Art at the University of Maine.