HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

When we were kids they told us not to touch the frogs or birds, because their mothers would smell us on them, assume it was a predator, and eat them. I am still thinking about all the animals I touched who couldn’t be returned. Frogs were among the more elaborate and gentle. We had a lake where some frogs lived in the shallow water and took the sun. There were also spiders with tented legs and minnows. I spent a lot of time in that sandy inlet surrounded by lily pads. The frogs seemed friendly since they let themselves be caught but you could tell they preferred to be elsewhere.

One summer there was chicken wire left over and we wrapped it around a triad of young trees that were growing in the yard. I caught a frog and placed it inside the fence for a number of hours, hoping it might speak to me. I can’t remember whether it tried to escape. I wondered what else we might put in there to make the frog more comfortable. I doubt I was entertained enough to stare at it for very long. In case you are thinking it kicked the bucket, it didn’t. As soon as its eyes glazed over and turned a little grey, I reluctantly put it back in the water.

Another time, there were these miniature frogs we called ‘Kermies’. I don’t know where they came from and have never seen them again. They were about the size of a fingernail. They were all over the ground on these grassy knolls we used to walk through. All you had to do was look down at the ground and focus on the moving colors and you could zero in on one and pick it up with your hands. If you didn’t look, you ended up stepping on them. There were so many. They were simply adorable and very animated. When they got scared they peed in your hand, or so we thought.

Adrianne Rubenstein was born in Montreal, Canada. She earned her BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2006 and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2011. Adrianne has exhibited at Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Luxembourg; CANADA, New York; Derek Eller, New York; David Petersen, Minneapolis; and Field Contemporary, Vancouver. Curatorial projects include Maraschino at Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland; If you throw a spider out the window, does it break? at Brennan & Griffin, New York; Snail Salon at Regina Rex, New York; and Forget About the Sweetbreads co-curated with Joanne Greenbaum at James Fuentes, New York.