Climbing the mountainous body of work created by Bay Area-based artist Mildred Howard in her 81 years exercises body, mind, and soul. You can take a significant first step at the Oakland Museum of California’s new exhibit, “Mildred Howard; Poetics of Memory” (through October 18). Installed in the museum’s Great Hall, it’s the her first retrospective in a major museum and highlights pinnacles of Howard’s five-decade career.
Among the artworks are collages, sculptures, and several immersive installations involving dozens of bottles that form a house, ceramic eggs spread like a carpet in a busy hen’s pantry, and glass apples that float under luxurious dim lighting in a pool of rippling water. Multimedia pieces and assemblages on display often emphasize a signature Howard feature: found objects used in combination with common items like doors, a kitchen stool, a long-handled kitchen pan, buttons, and the artist’s ubiquitous bottles. Historic photographs, flyers from past exhibitions, audio recordings, and projected stills from a film Howard made at age 14 on a train trip she took to the American South complete the exhibition’s sweep.
If not for the design team’s admirable restraint (Howard participated in their every choice) and the usual constraints of time, money, and access, it is likely her work could have taken over the entire museum.
