Better homes and galleries
The Big Ballyhoo brings together 70 women artists to transform the Lab.

By Johnny Ray Huston

THE GROUP OF seven women who call themselves the Big Ballyhoo chose their name well. Opening night of the artist-and-curator collective's first official gallery show, "Inside of Inside," was a tremendous to-do, a huge hullabaloo, and other Roget's-approved variations of their moniker. The Lab, not exactly a small space, was packed within the first half hour; halfway through the 6 to 9 p.m. gathering, the area around the front door became so jammed that efforts to leave were difficult – especially considering the likelihood you'd run into someone special you hadn't seen in a long time. The theme of "Inside of Inside," which essentially converted the Lab into a home complete with kitchens and other rooms, made both the crowded house and occasional urge for fresh air something to ponder.

On the street you could contemplate the red-white-black-and-blue placard of the moment by Frank Chu (who isn't part of the show). It began with one of his (least?) favorite numbers – 12 – followed by the name "Huffington." Twelve Huffingtons: Chu doesn't need to mention rockets to make politics seem like a science fiction dystopia. This week has proved without a doubt that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Robin Hood in reverse. It may be necessary to transform existing frameworks – governmental bureaucracies, political parties, art institutions, or newspapers – from within, but right now it's crucial to step outside of them and create new realities. The masses at "Inside of Inside," so reminiscent of an election-night gathering a few blocks away one month earlier, are proof that people don't need to get ready. Years in the making, this show targeted the calendar with bull's-eye accuracy. The Big Ballyhoo's name fits, and their timing couldn't be better.

It goes without saying that opening night wasn't the best time to study the show's contents; in fact, the 70 artists had reason to worry that people might step on or stumble into, rather than look at, their pieces. But even this claustrophobia connects with "Inside of Inside" 's focus; as the essay accompanying the show makes clear, oppression and eviction are two words that immediately spring to mind when domestic space is invoked. The family names (Chu's excepted) mentioned so far represent what the Big Ballyhoo are up against in remaking a place women are often excluded from (a gallery) and a place women have been confined to (the household) into an expressive, inventive realm. Their curating choices meet this imperative and venture beyond its boundaries. An anti-Ikea, a cure for capitalist Cribs, "Inside of Inside" 's home is big enough to contain replicas of houses, single-residency hotels, and cities. But it also holds a prison-cell installation that pointedly magnifies the TV-taunted isolation of the incarcerated.

After being greeted by Shelley Miller's regal frontispiece built from cooking tins, folks can begin clockwise with Miriam Klein Stahl's historical coatrack and end with Jackie Peretz Gratz's key rack. (Lefties can trace the circle in reverse.) In between they'll find a kitchen within a kitchen, a bathroom that doubles as a homeopathic doctor's office, Isis Rodriguez and Nicole Repack's dynamic dining room, a reading room, multiple living rooms, and transitional spots where imagination and necessity are fused. One of the show's strong points is the manner in which individual works break through the portrait-lined walls to converse. Thus Tammy Rae Carland's photos of herself posing as her mother and father contain an image that ricochets off Lisa Maurine's Clothesline. Xylor Jane's 13631, a macro-micro echo of Yayoi Kusama's '60s-era dot optics, is a one-level architectural model in which shades of color are varied by an internal light and many tiny windows. Look directly through one of those windows and your sight passes through another window on the opposite wall that perfectly frames the face of a seated gallery visitor watching television in an adjoining room.

That view is also one of the ways "Inside of Inside" challenges notions of privacy and questions the urge to gaze. Meagan Perry rigs a Whirlpool dryer so clean laundry retains dirt (in the form of secrets announced by a tape recording). Broadcasting the first-person stories of inmates, Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough's prison-cell televisions reverse the roles of watcher and watched. The exterior of Put It Back Where You Found It, by Betsy Boyle and Lissa Ivy Tiegel, offers obvious proof that teenagers' desks are usually collage works, while its drawers tease the impulse to read someone else's letters and diaries. Perhaps no other object has the force field-like intensity of Marisa Jahn's Welcome Mat, a typical circular floor covering that, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be intricately fashioned from the pin-striped and solid gray-and-black business suits of her father. There might be an exception: Ida Acton's In Which I Am Revealed is a tailored suit that has more personality than some suit-wearers in the Financial District.

"Inside of Inside" 's houselike construction recontextualizes the show's work so that traditional crafts – such as quilts (by Big Ballyhoo members Lena Wolff, Corinna Press, and others) – are recognized as fine art, while visual arts take on decorative connotations. Dusty Lombardo's Butch Interiors meta-sizes this aspect; color prints cataloguing the contents (trucker hats, ties, shirts, typewriters, bookshelves) of butch digs offer a series of portals into other rooms. Rebecca McBride's technically varied photos and a comically colorful painting on cedar by Leidy Churchman add family portraiture. Corina Bilandzija's Neighbors flirts with the type of landscape rendering found in rural homes, yet twists the form by inserting a glowing dome that lingers like a still image from a dream. Elsewhere, Marina Eckler's shag rug and an assortment of furniture (Gracie Bucciarelli's four-poster dirt- and plant bed; Heather Ponts's bureau, in which artful marks on a clear acrylic desk are countered by frustrated scratches on the connected mirror) similarly resist mere function.

At the opening one tall figure stood apart from the hundreds of people in the Lab. Anyone walking through the front door could see a larger-than-human Fudgesicle awkwardly shuffling near the back of the room. The Fudgesicle was Harry Dodge, on-screen in Dodge's video of the same name, alone in a white space with bright light blazing above and two tree stumps below. "Yeah, I enjoy being a Fudgesicle," Dodge says at one point. "I'm a little uncomfortable – maybe that's what comes off as angry." As Dodge's melty dessert lists off assorted (femme-ier) Popsicle flavors with offhand admiration, gender transition becomes a subtext. (Fudgesicle is situated at the exact midpoint of "Inside of Inside" 's layout.)

The undercurrent of anger in the video turns external in Dodge's other piece, Me One of You, a collection of customized weapons – including a particularly vicious mace formed from a dirty sock, polyurethane, and dozens of nails – arranged on the floor beneath the video screen. The Big Ballyhoo's gallery book reveals that Dodge is currently editing a feature film titled For the Love of Dolly that chronicles the effects Dolly Parton's songs have had on the lives of devoted fans. The book also contains photos that chart "Inside of Inside" 's assemblage; breaking up the info-laden bios, Stormy Knight's artist statement is one of the show's highlights. Look for it.

The most powerful aspect of this 70-artist show is its unity: all the pieces fit together to form one mammoth work. Even those involved are probably a bit amazed. While on tour with Erase Errata in the summer of 2002, Sara Jaffe began what she calls The Know Your Home Project. At concerts she handed out index cards to audience members so they could jot down impressions of their hometowns. The answers she got, from women in places from Fort Worth to Oakland, attest to the complex loves, and hates ("MLK's murder was here," someone from Memphis wrote), they feel about their hometowns. "In the winter you can never get warm," Jaffe scribbled on her own card, about San Francisco. Outside, that's certainly true. Referring to an old apartment, Jaffe's right again. But the inside of "Inside of Inside" is as warm and amazing as the Bay Area gets. It's at the Lab for a month and, like any artistic nomad, ready to travel. But its effect on San Francisco, one hopes, will last a lot longer.

'Inside of Inside' is on display through Feb. 7. Wed., Fri.-Sat., 1-6 p.m.; Thurs., 1-7 p.m. (extended hours by appointment), Lab, 2948 16th St., S.F. Donations accepted. (415) 864-6655, www.thelab.org.