How many of us have won a goldfish at the fair? How many of us then dealt, three days later, with that same beloved fish’s untimely death? My sister won one once. I think she was all of eight years old, at our school’s version of a carnival called “Bazaarnival”. I don’t remember much else, so he must not have lasted all that long. Long enough, however, to go to extreme lengths to deck out his fishbowl-home with all the multicolored gravel and neon plantlife he could ever dream of. We weren’t really a fishkeeping family (apparently that’s what it’s called when you have fish, “fishkeeping”), so our foray into it didn’t last. I was though, and am still, fascinated by the teeny worlds people put together for their fish to live in. Worlds replete with treasure chests and sunken pirate ships, mini bubbling fountains and magic castles, divers and mermaids.

Kimber Berry doesn’t paint aquariums, doesn’t paint portraits of Captain Shiny-Fins for posterity’s-sake, though her paintings are reminiscent of those great little neon worlds. What she does do, is paint pictures representative of our–Americans’–tendency to overstimulate, oversaturate, and overindulge. Highly conscious of our effect on the world around us, Berry employs great swoops and swirls of psychedelic fluid color to comment on the increasingly blurred lines between illusion and reality, manufactured and natural. Her irreverently titled piece, I Think My Guardian Angel Drinks is my pick of the week