Jo Anne Carson’s transition from shaped abstract paintings in the late 70s to figurative, three-dimensional, constructed paintings in the early ’80s was a dramatic leap for the artist—about as dramatic a change as that undergone in her present body of work. The catalyst for the current transformation would seem to have been the time Carson spent in Italy, most of 1984, on a Prix de Rome. Unfortunately, the flattened and disappointingly “illustrative” works that have resulted from her year abroad raise some disturbing questions, Why has Carson retreated from daring, evocative sculptural spoofs