The third dimension - West Texas word artist takes her time carving out life in 3-D
Source: Austin Americian-Statesman; Austin, TX - 2/24/97

MARATHON - The world may be rushing to the millennium, but artist Abby Levine is still dawdling through the '50s, '60's and '70s, and im no hurry to catch up. Her home has the look and feel of a classic Texas farm house. Peek out the window and you'll see two 30-year-old cars in the driveway. Look beyond at the empty neighborhoods of Marathon, a tiny Big Bend area town that has been asleep since Eisenhower. Yes, that's a pig across the street. Levine's studio even has a nostalgic odor, that of smoke curling from a wood burning tool , an artifact from every Baby Boomer's childhood at summer camp. From this quietude comes remarkable creativity and originality. This Jewish woman from the East Coast is a bona fide Texas raconteur.
  She makes three-dimensional wood artworks that are essentially dioramas of popular culture and history. Some have several layers of figures, landscape, symbols and objects. With assertive colors and wood burned lines, they have a decorative, cartooney, pop art quality, but are not to be taken lightly. The art speaks with intelligence and humor. Levine, among the most conspicuous and successful artists in Texas' Big Bend, is taking her art to Austin for the first time. A small but wide ranging exhibition opened Friday at the Turquoise Door, 316 Colorado St., a continues through March 21.
  Much of Levine's work is sold through the Iowa Gallery in Alpine, where owner Keri Null says patrons find Levine's art "most captivating" among the many artists showing there. "People come in and ooh and ahh over it. It's so totally different." Over the last four years, Levine has made about 300 art works, many of them commissioned by collectors. Her most familiar gallery pieces are cutouts of cowgirls riding, roping or just standing around and posing. A bit kitschy and commercial? No doubt. But in her corner of Texas, cowgirls still rope and ride and pose. The National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth has awarded Levine's art works to inductees. A former painter who had too much to say for a mere two dimensions, Levine prefers heavier artistic challenges and enjoys that often goes into them. "I think that art is new information, a new way of looking at the world, and I like to have a new world to look at," she said. "I don't want to make art whining about my innermost feelings."

'Villains & Heroes'
  So far she's done art works portraying scenes from the French, Russian and Mexican revolutions. One of her most imaginative pieces portrays Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and the Marx Brothers. She has done pieces on Anne Frank, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and musicians Gram Parsons and Bob Dylan. The Austin show's theme of "Villains & Heroes" is evident in the largest and most complex work, "Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie." The piece offers portraits of the men and pertinent images from their lives, including Garvey's Black Star steamship line, which he intended as a way for blacks to return to Africa. Also included are images surrounding the belief that former Ethiopian emperor Selassie descended from a union of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Marley, of course, inspired such symbols of Rastafarianism and marijuana leaves. Levine views them all as ambivalent figures; Garvey was a racial separatist, for example, and Selassie ruled with an iron hand.
  Dashed with humor is "Figures of Authority," inscribed at the top with a familiar apology: "Just Doing My Job." Images of a police officer, a judge, a businessman, a doctor and a cleric are fashioned like figures in a shooting gallery. Levine's love of cinema inspired a predominantly black-and-white work showing scenes from the television program "Perry Mason," which she considers formulaic television noir at its best. A small piece, "In My Room," has musician Brian Wilson, of Beach Boys fame, singing at the piano while surreptitious figures lurk in the darkened bedroom behind him. Levine sees it as a comment on the indomitability of artistic expression - that Wilson's extraordinary music prevailed despite his personal problems.

'Any topic is fair game'
  Almost any topic is fair game, as long as it's fodder for the intellectual curiosity Levine developed as child in a sheltered Jewish family in Newark, N.J. and New York. Some experiences she missed as a child have been retrofit into her life through art. "The Good Life" portrays the idealized suburbia of the '50s and '60s a life Levine never saw . On top is a ranch style house, with the main panel showing the back patio. Dad is grilling  burgers and franks for Mom and the kids. "My father never grilled a hot dog!" Levine said, laughing at the thought of it. She recalled that her family missed the "heady optimism of the '60s.. they were still stuck in the great depression." Texas' Big Bend has also served as inspiration for Levine, who said she revels in the bright light of the desert and quiet of small-town living. "I'm the kind of person who doesn't thrive with a lot of stimulus. It's distracting."
  She and her partner of 16 years, Gary Buegel, moved to Texas in 1991 after a trip that many dream about but few take. Tired of New York and Seattle, they spent a year on the road looking for the best place  in the United States. Austin was one of the cities they visited, but they found it somewhere indifferent and expensive, with no parking places. They ended up in the southwest. Texas mountain community of Fort Davis , but moved 60 miles west to Marathon a couple years later and remodeled a house to server as home and studio. Levine was first taken by the wide-open environment and the cowboy mythology that persists in West Texas. "I approached this area as a tourist and started to get nostalgic for all the road trips I never took as a kid. The cowgirl cutouts are the imaginary souvenirs I would have wanted."