Mything in Action

Now that school is back in session, students everywhere are probably indulging their inner artist -- much to the chagrin of their teachers, because it's not notes the kids are taking. Heck, all those spankin'-new Pee Chee folders and Trapper Keepers are begging for drawings and cartoons. And why not? Marilu Knode, senior curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, points out that we Homo sapiens have a long, illustrious doodling heritage. "Humans have been interested in animating forever," she says. "Even in early French cave art, people have drawn animals with multiple legs to show movement."

Knode says the "In Wonderland: Animations by Christine Rebet, Hiraki Sawa, and Shahzia Sikander" exhibit "is a link between fantasy and fairy tale." It's art, you see, that moves, like 2-D canvases sprung to 3-D life. The fantasy element of Sikander, Rebet, and Sawa's work includes highly surrealist sci-fi dreamscapes, shape-shifting animals, and morphing landscapes, while the artists' thoughtful storytelling and watercolor-tinged drawings pay contemporary homage to Aesop's (often savage) fables.