Wade In The Water

Let’s keep this simple. Marlene McCarty is one of our favorite artists and has been for years. She has a new show running from April 5 until May 3 at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York City. We asked Marlene about this new work, and this is what she told us: “Basically, the work is about fundamentalism versus evolutionary redemption. The drawings—which are huge, 10 feet by 18 feet—are inspired by transgressive true-life incidents. They are based on a true-crime story of two evangelical home-schooled teens. A father baptized his daughter in their backyard hot tub, whereupon the girl pledged a chastity oath to him. To seal the promise he gave her a ring. Then she met a boy online and the chastity pledge was broken. The two teens ended up killing her parents to escape the oppression of their religion.”

ABOUT THE DRAWING ON OUR COVER:

“My hominid images are all also based on true-life narratives of intense relationships between humans and apes. I’m interested in the idea of hybridization (a term used in the study of evolution to indicate those gray areas where one ‘species’ interbred with another). The process of evolution has been cleaned up for our basically Calvinist/Puritan Western thinking. We uphold very clear distinctions of various species (especially our own) as they’ve developed from one another, but what doesn’t really get talked about is that sometimes one species would begin to appear alongside another and there was most probably interspecies breeding. (Example:

Homo neanderthalensis

more than likely bred with

Homo sapiens

, although most schoolbooks would simply present them as one following the other.)”

Click these images to enlarge.

Marlene McCarty, Group 1.2 (Lititz, Pennsylvania. Sunday, November 13, 2005. 11:22 AM), 2006-2007, ballpoint pen and graphite on paper, 125 x 220 inches.
Marlene McCarty, Group 1.1 (Lititz, Pennsylvania. Sunday, November 13, 2005. 11:16 AM), 2007, ballpoint pen and graphite on paper, 114 x 220 inches. All images courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.