In Yanaguana: Polvo Est. 1996, Unit B presents work by four artists who exhibit with Polvo, a grass roots cultural space based in Chicago. Like Unit B, Polvo does not commercially represent artists but serves as an exhibition space for underrepresented artists. In honor of Polvo’s ten-year anniversary, one of the space’s founding members, artist Miguel Cortez, curated the show, naming it after the Payaya Indians word for the San Antonio area centuries ago, in honor of the show’s San Antonio location. The exhibition comes to San Antonio as part of an exchange; Kimberly Aubuchon and John Mata curated a show for Polvo’s space in September, 2005 that featured Chuck Ramirez, Jesse Amado, Jeremy Hia and Dominick Talvacchio.

Alluring objects polka-dot a corner of Unit B’s smaller room. Austin-based Candace Briceño’s sculptural landscapes look like miniature stage sets for fairy tales. Briceño sews hand-dyed felt over wire hoops to make small round pillows. Mounted perpendicularly into the wall, they serve as the ground for brightly colored felt grass and mushrooms. Yellow, red, pink and blue caps grow out of the pieces on tall stems. Briceño’s two paintings in the show, both landscapes, also focus on the fantastical. With their Technicolor aesthetic, Briceño’s marvelous vignettes gave me a sense of delight and wonder.

In a series of photographs, Edra Soto exhibits self portraits in domestic settings—a living room, a chair next to a huge cactus houseplant, on a wooden floor. In each image, Soto wears her pajamas. The weird twist to Soto’s portraits is that she digitally dwarfs her own image, altering the scale of her own body and its relationship to other objects. In Fondness, she appears asleep on a wooden floor next to an enormous black cat. Nestled in the crook of the cat’s arm, Soto’s face looks up at the cat who looks down at her. With the reversal of scale between cat and human, Soto’s position seems precarious. Grasping shows another dwarf version of Soto standing on a couch, behind a sitting man who has turned to look out of a window. Soto has one hand on his back and one on his head, as if she is attempting to make him look, or stop him, or push him; the gesture is unclear. In the cat picture, I can see how dirty her feet are. These details add to the artist’s vulnerability and intimacy of the setting. Soto visually plays on the psychological aspects of her relationships with the cat, herself and a man.

Soto’s little person also reminded me of a fairy tale, not the happily-ever-after kind, but the bizarre ones that I don’t read out loud to my children yet. Some fairy tales have evil twists to them. The fairies aren’t harmless little Tinkerbells but harbingers of doom, a curse upon the house. That’s what Soto seemed to be doing to the man on the couch: despite her shrunken size, her adult nature and, therefore, power wasn’t diminished. It seemed more plotting and mischievous.

Three pairs of careful and unsettling graphite drawings by Amie Robinson focus on the human figure and deer. Placed side-by-side, each of the drawings in the three pairs carries on a visual dialogue with its counterpart. In Separation Anxiety, neatly dismembered body parts float in the space of the paper like a memory. Part of an arm holds part of a leg with the curious disconnect of dreams. Robinson uses only flashes of color in Fight for Her. Red flags specific parts of the drawing like a warning sign. In Miscellaneous Deer (#4), Robinson plays with the horns of a stag and a tree. The stag’s legs become tall ladders which the animal precariously balances upon. To the left, the horns grow into majestic tree branches.

Briseno’s magical mushroom palette seduced me with its color beauty and Robinson’s drawings are thoughtful and haunting, but the least noticeable piece in the show and turned out to be the most memorable. Handiwork, Scott Kildall’s strange and efficient video has stayed with me. Drawn to Briseno’s, Robinson’s and Soto’s work in Unit B’s two tiny rooms, I heard someone breathing nearby. Since Unit B’s gallery space is actually Kimberly Aubuchon’s residence, separated by a black pinstriped curtain and a door, I wondered if the insistent noises were something I wasn’t supposed to be hearing, coming from the domestic part of the house. The breathing became more insistent when it lapsed into loud sighs, not as melodramatic as crying, but attention-getting. I soon traced the sound to the video monitor on the wall next to the door.

The bright, sunny day dimmed the picture so I had to strain to see the image: monotonous documentary footage of the artist standing against a red brick wall. Only Kildall’s face and torso appear. He focuses the camera down towards his moving hands, busy at work on an activity that lies (frustratingly) just outside of the camera’s frame. The camera never moves while Kildall works nor does his attention waver. A few times I heard the subtle click of an object against another and wondered if he might be working at a table, but he appeared to be standing. I decided he was sewing. The strangely melodramatic cues of his sighs suggested the therapeutic quality of his activity, as if he were very sad and had chosen to direct all of his emotion into it. I liked the mystery of not knowing exactly what Kildall was up to, but I had to know. Aubuchon told me he was knitting. Knitting?

Kildall’s work is provocative with so little, inventing a scenario that tapped my curiosity and compelled me to stare at it, just from his breathing and cleverly hidden activity. When I discovered he was knitting, I thought of the gendered domestic setting normally associated with this kind of work. It wasn’t that Kildall was impersonating it, because he appeared adept and so concentrated. Though I couldn’t see the product, there was a fluidity and know-how to his movements. Maybe Kildall was more of a channel for this healing behavior, he was playing a role, but sincerely acting. I’d give him an Oscar.

Wendy Atwell received her Master of Arts in Art History and Criticism from UTSA in 2002. She lives in San Antonio.