Naive sculpture, garden decorations and other objects. A small postscript to the extensive retrospective of Roeder’s painting and sculpture presented here two years ago, this exhibition concentrates mainly on the artist’s minor works. A retired gardener, Roeder made many of these pieces for his own garden (soon to be destroyed); and it is the gardener’s media he uses––cement, broken flower pots and shells, twigs and leaves. Although the work is uneven in quality and much of it is repetitious, even at its worst it reveals a truly inventive decorative sense. Moreover, apart from its engaging naïveté, Roeder’s work claims current attention for its relationship to contemporary trends in the use of junk in art. His motives are personal––an urge to put his own stamp on everything he touches and a refusal to throw anything away; there is no comment here on the status of art or society.
—Betty Breckinridge
