ughts of a coming time. The painted subjects piously hold fast to their hallowed flamingos with gloved hands usually reserved for sacred artifacts, fine works of art, and the like. My subjects are members of the Western cargo cult clutching to their precious religious objects (i.e. fantastic personal dreams) with the same religious reverence that the Melanesian natives for their own physical Western objects. (3)Rutledge tops off his show with what I feel is the most illustrative piece in the whole collection. This work is roughly 18”x 24” and depicts a landscape with a beautiful bright blue sky divided at the horizon by a dark building structure. In the structure you can faintly make out a figure in a window. They seem to be patiently waiting for their cargo from the heavens to arrive.In the center of the composition is a large box wrapped with loving care that is floating in the sky. After viewing this work I feel that it describes almost just as much information as the thesis paper.Rutledge has told the story and explains the entire show with just this one piece. This could be a very dangerous thing to do in the fine art way of thinking but I feel this is an exception. What Rutledge has done is given us an extra treat, you could say, into his open mind of what another culture has centered their beliefs on and the impact it has made on his own life....
