Alison Ward: The Adventures of a Video Vixen Written by Melinda Maclean Images by Alison Ward

It’s not that easy to categorize Alison Ward’s artwork. Over the years she has worked in several mediums. At six, she was busy drawing a series of comics called The Adventures of Oobie (“who sort of looked like a blob with arms and legs”). At thirteen she was making small dioramas in the shape of boxes. In college she studied woodcarving and welding, fascinated by “the idea of masks and shields”. And after traveling in Northern Africa and Europe for several years, this Gainesville, Florida native came to New York to set down roots and go to grad school at SVA.

In 1997, she started her own vaudeville show with a group of friends, called Tex and Trixie’s Amazing Vaudeville Show, which traveled around New York and Philly. With chorus girls, a dancing pink elephant, and a singing whiskey bottle and cactus in tow, Alison MC’d the spectacle as Tex the Dixie Stud (a hard-drinking cowboy with a low baritone) and as his true love Trixie Trueheart (picture Marlene Dietrich doing Mae West). She also gained notoriety dancing and singing and with another vaudeville troop called The Glamazons - five fierce, beautiful women whose shapes did not conform to the malnourished feminine figure usually represented in today’s media. And it was at this time also that Alison started developing a fetish for high-heeled shoes and wigs. Interestingly, she considers getting dolled up in them as going in drag, as she explained to me, “I consider it drag because I identify more as a masculine personality in a way. I would never wear that stuff normally. Drag to me is about using a costume to take on a persona. And the sexuality you adopt isn’t actually very sexual, it’s more cartoon-like or clownish.”

In 2000, Alison started making her first videos – taking on different personas for the camera and then eventually incorporating other people into the work, so she could control more of the technical aspects. Her approach to her work is refreshingly direct, “I believe that art should have a definite entertainment value. I want people to get it immediately. And then for there to be another level that they can get afterwards. It definitely has to draw you in. I guess that comes from my experience in vaudeville and burlesque.”

When Alison was turning 30 and getting frustrated with the direction her life was taking she created The Birthday Girl video. Alison is dressed in a cartoonish pink wig and dress (like a bubble-gum version of I Love Lucy) and she proceeds to eat thirty cupcakes in a row, blowing a candle out on each one, before stuffing it into her mouth. At first she seems to be enjoying the cupcakes and eats them with a zest verging on sensuality, but the more she eats, going onto the 15th and the 25th cupcake she starts to appear nauseous and despondent, beginning to almost cry. By the 30th cupcake she barely has the energy to remove the candle, let alone blow it out. She is shoving bits of the cupcake into her mouth as most of it is falling over her dress and she is crying. It’s a wonderfully comic performance and a witty commentary on the inevitability and tragedy of getting older.

Her work has started to evolve into multi-media events. Boxing for Mr. Wonderful was a piece performed last year at Gleason’s Gym in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Two women dressed in brides’ dresses wearing boxing gloves punched and beat each other into a pulpy mess of lip-gloss, hairspray and blood (not real of course!) as showgirls baited the audience to pick sides. And after the fight, Mr. Wonderful himself (played by her cousin Susan Ward) came out and sang a melting rendition of the classic Peggy Lee song, Mr. Wonderful, as the two brides lay in an unconscious tangle on the floor of the boxing ring.

In her latest installation at the Haven Gallery in the Bronx called Trouble at the Drive-In, Alison has created a photographic diorama (fitted into a closed space into which you peek through a small hole), featuring Trouble, the 1000-foot woman, who causes havoc at a drive-in theatre. The visual style of the posters, which accompany the piece, refers back to the old Hollywood films of the fifties and sixties and to monster movies especially. Trouble’s sexuality is an outsized unwieldy catastrophe – this sexy giant cannot fit in or connect with anything and her desire to explore the world is dangerous and creates chaos. It’s the anti-thesis of the typical idea of a passive feminine woman. A woman who is too strong and too sexy for her own good. This comic representation may be a reaction to Alison’s views of herself, “I've always felt more like a masculine personality. I drive a truck to make my money. I enjoy physical work. I'm very strong and I lift heavy objects. I've never taken on traditional feminine roles and yet at the same time I have a very feminine body. And I'm constantly dealing with guys saying to me "Oh, let me take that for you, honey." I just find that the two pieces don't fit together.”

Alison’s work can be thought of as theatre, satire, performance art or self-portraiture, with an overall coherent theme. She turns our normal perceptions of female and male sexuality upside down, using characters she has created to illustrate ideas - she simplifies them, then blows them out of proportion, till everything is double-sided. Women are dripping with strength and sexuality which prohibits them from interacting in the world in a normal way – so they reshape the world to fit their own needs, much like Alison herself.

Alison’s next shows will be at:

Scope Art Fair in New York, through the Red Dot Project, March 10th –13th
636 11th Avenue, New York City - Booth 62 website: www.reddotproject.com

The Bronx Museum of Art, showing with the AIM Program, starting March 22nd through July 2nd - 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York 718-681-6000

To see more of Alison’s work visit her website: www.texandtrixie.com