Like the Spice is pleased to present Allison Edge: Crystal Days, featuring Edge’s hyper-nostalgic photo-based works.

Inspired by family road trips and their back-of-the-station-wagon Walkman soundtrack, the paintings and watercolor drawings in this exhibition are from two related bodies of work- one a presentation of personal memories as universal and another presenting cultural memories as personal.

The former series is based upon photos taken by Edge of such vacation staples and tween obsessions as the “Small World” ride at Disneyworld, a friend’s flawless back dive into a serene pool, and fireworks exploding in a night sky. Chosen for their memory payload and glowing photographic light, these images are odes to innocence on the brink of adulthood, last hurrahs of childhood desires.

The second grouping features the singers who accompanied Edge, via cassette, on long car rides and afternoons in the sun. Presented against stark backgrounds, the singers become at once Tiger Beat pinups and gods of the night.

In both series, the tension between innocence and darkness is palpable. Even bathed in warm golden light, there’s a sense that time is running out on an illusion; as though we’re about to notice that the small world is actually bigger than we are.

Allison Edge was born in Raleigh, NC in 1975. She received her BFA in Painting from the University of Georgia in 1997 and her MFA in Painting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2000. For the past 10 years she has worked primarily with images of ‘pretty boys’ and kittens – separately, but more recently together. The works have been described as invoking “a whole-hearted embrace of the adolescent gaze.” Edge’s work has been exhibited in galleries across the country, including Lincart in San Francisco, Motel in Portland, OR, Lump in Raleigh, NC, and various Brooklyn venues, including Like the Spice, as well as venues in Tokyo and Melbourne. Edge lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.