March 27, 2002

‘NICE CUBES’ EXHIBIT BRINGS TOGETHER ART, POEMS AND REFRIGERATORS

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Take an old refrigerator. Add an artistic interior, say fur walls, flamingo-colored lights or an, ahem, “tasteful” painting. Now plaster some original and highly creative magnetic poems on the front door, and what do you have?

The answer is “Nice Cubes,” an exhibition at Boise State University that brings together poetry, art, and yes, refrigerators, for a truly unusual display. Curated by Boise State English professor Tom Trusky, “Nice Cubes” opens, appropriately enough, on April Fool’s Day on the first floor of the Liberal Arts Building at Boise State. The show continues through May 15.

The exhibition features such heavy chillers as the “Gibson Heavy Duty Commercial Freezer,” along with the “Coldspot,” the “Julietta” and others, decorated by Boise State art faculty and students and by Trusky. Students and instructors in the university’s Creative Writing classes wrote the poems, which were then printed on magnetic paper and stuck to the refrigerators’ exteriors.

Trusky came up with the idea for the exhibit after learning about a magnetic paper product that can be run through a computer printer to reproduce original poems — a major improvement over the “magnetic poetry” kits that required would-be poets to use only the words included in the kit.

“I realized with the magnetic paper, my students could write their own poems in their own words — I just needed to bring the fridges to them,” Trusky said.

To find defunct refrigerators for the exhibit, Trusky scoured secondhand stores, classified ads and basements. Then he hired the university’s Physical Plant to pick up the abandoned appliances and haul them by truck back to campus.

Included in “Nice Cubes” is an “Art Jars” refrigerator by art professor Cheryl Shurtleff Young and more than 30 professors and art students. The jars are lit by strands of soft tiny pink lights Shurtleff has strung throughout the interior. Another refrigerator, “Genre Food,” features literary foodstuffs such as an angel food cake made from cut-up romance novels. “My Apartment” or “Self Portrait” are the titles art professor Stephanie Bacon has given her elegantly attired refrigerator. In additon to tasteful artifacts, Bacon’s walls, floors and ceiling are draped in what appears to be either black fur or black velvet.

The poems that adorn the refrigerators range from a meditation on mountain winds to a vivid recounting of a “refrigerator nightmare” to a lament to a lost love and a tale of a young pianist’s rebellion.

The April Fool’s opening for “Nice Cubes” adds to the fun, Trusky said. “The timing is perfect.”

Contact:
Tom Trusky
English
426-1999
ttrusky@boisestate.edu

Media contact:
Janelle Brown
communications and marketing
426-1790
jbrown2@boisestate.edu