The Brooklyn Rail

More than a candid glance at the surreal yet mundane way that life tumbles forward, Ice Pops Forever is an ode to a warm soul, Meredith Allen, whose art dashes the first room in welcoming color and a prevailing sense of hope. The collection speaks to the complexity of the present, the ways that grief overlaps with longing, remembrance, and even joy. At its conclusion, the collection doesn’t ask for anything grand, just awareness and memories.

Featuring work by Meredith Allen and Carol Saft, the exhibition implicitly celebrates their legacy, building on their presence from Williamsburg’s art scene in the nineties. Yet more directly, the two rooms of photography celebrate, mourn, and consider Saft and Allen’s relationship—a relationship that can now only be shown on film, as Meredith Allen passed away in 2011.

Upon entry, we encounter Allen’s work from various celebrated series: “Melting Ice Pops” (1999–2006), “Kiddie Rides” (1995–2002), and “Forever” (2003–05). The works are subtle yet vibrant, discreet, and capturing. They speak to Allen’s tender and playful disposition. In Ocean Avenue (Blue Martian) (2002), a blue popsicle melts in Allen’s hand, drooling onto her fingers with a drop animatedly swinging off the bottom. It is a starkly finite moment. The background appears as a warm body of water on a partly cloudy day: within minutes the popsicle will be a puddle. Memories of childhood bubble to the surface: I remember hot summer days, sticky hands, gnawing on a popsicle stick while I squint in the heavy sun. Allen’s work has a soft power to it, evoking the subtle way that memories of unreachable days can return, and then be gone again.

The vibrancy of the first room is juxtaposed with grays and whites and skin tones in the second room. Carol Saft, primarily a painter and sculptor and thoroughly a humanist, curated fourteen photos from a set of over one hundred. “About the Bed” (2011) is a series of photos made in the final three months of Allen’s life. They are intimate, taken with self-timer on a tripod, and loosely staged—if at all. Overall, the series is a candid display of queer love and the support a partner gives. There’s the intimacy of two lovers naked in a bed, sharing a close moment. There’s the often-overlooked mundanity beside it: ash trays, tissues, a humidifier, stacks of books and papers. And then, like the notion of a melting blue popsicle on a summer day, this too is a fleeting moment, with a similarly finite end.

The narrative culminates in works like North Light (2011). In the photo, Saft and their dog remain swaddled in their bed’s blankets, while Allen faces the daylight that cuts through closed blinds. It speaks to their relationship, yet it also highlights a universal sense of temporality. I wonder what she sees out the window. Is it the city, draped in daylight, and packed with spirited people? Is it something only she can see—something I wouldn’t understand? While the series has a retrospective quality, it simultaneously champions the necessity of being present. “About the Bed” leaves me with heartache, and the urge to be aware, loving the semi-unglamorous moments that often silently sweep past.

Tahara Ceremony (2011) is positioned to be one of the last images seen. It’s a postmortem picture of Allen during Tahara, a sacred, Jewish cleansing ritual for the deceased. Allen’s hand rests on her hip, and, due to livor mortis, her fingernails are starkly violet against the predominant amounts of gray and white. This picture recognizes the definitiveness of death, contrasted by the small, rich splash of color that acts as a final addition to Allen’s vibrant, hopeful photography. And the gallery, with its almost linear narrative layout, doesn’t tell us how to feel about this, only lets us recognize that these moments are flawed, finite, and cherishable—that they’re the exact moments that make us undeniably human.