Maria Britton: Soft Storage

There’s something at once immediately familiar and immediately strange about the recent work that Carrboro-based artist and curator Maria Britton will display in Soft Storage, a new exhibit viewable on Second Friday (and throughout August by appointment) in the My Room space at Attic 506. Familiar, in that they largely consist of patterned household bed sheets, but strange, in that they’re painted, sculpted, and collaged to resemble ectoplasmic specimens spattered on the wall, the works aim to unfold strength and vitality from qualities and types of labor traditionally identified as feminine. “Like skin, fabric retains a physical memory of experiences; it wrinkles from habitual behaviors and environmental conditions,” Britton writes; she heavily draws on floral patterns that will strike nostalgic chords in many viewers while also enacting the distorting effects of time. —