As I walked around the Alexander Girard exhibit, my daughter, Olive, was on a search for images she recognized from a children’s book of his work that she had at home, given to us by a friend who had not consciously remembered we had a screen print of his hanging in our living room. The unconscious at work. She found many versions of the smiling green tree, abundant with leaves and trunk thick and sturdy, and also the smiling sun, unusually constructed with wave like rays reaching out from the yellow circle inside. It is a rare show that can capture the hearts and minds of children and adults alike, and this is, for sure, the artist’s unnamed superpower: the ability to court the unseen child within us that will always and forever want to come out to play.
IfILivedInLA 