But how successfully the collective's activities would translate to the rooms of the Philadelphia Art Alliance, which sponsored the armada's Philadelphia project and a final exhibition of remnants of its performances, was hard to predict.
Spectacularly, it turns out.
The Miss Rockaway Armada's Let Me Tell You About a Dream I Had fills the alliance's stately rooms so confidently and exuberantly with its seamless DIY conjurings of New Orleans as experienced through a dream (that's my take, anyway) that it seems to revel in its allotted spaces, which include a few not usually assigned to artists.
Seeing this installation, you can't help but marvel at what a group of like-minded artists can produce.
The alliance's ground-floor galleries are home to a shack with an upside-down tent for a roof; a gigantic fish made of found wood, matchstick bamboo shades, curtains, and painted metal trays; wet-plate photographs of the collective; a curtain of glass bottles held together with wire; a structure made of dozens of unpainted wooden crates; and a "forest" of tree-trunk shapes plastered with signs like "We Buy Homes" and "Fast Cash."
Strange, dreamlike juxtapositions abound. On the landing at the top of the majestic front stairs, two halves of two canoes filled with found objects stand like a roadside shrine. Thick, heavy ships' ropes dyed primary colors dangle from the ceiling above the stairwell, right next to a crystal chandelier. At the top of the stairs, a bicycle that's been retrofitted as a crusty old sailing ship leans casually against an elegant white banister.
