A girl in red hipster briefs and a white t-shirt bends over an old school rotary telephone, willing it to ring. That same girl (or maybe it's a different one), this time wearing a black tee, stands precariously on her tippy toes at the end of a diving board, moments away from taking the big plunge. Now she's on the floor, delicately arranging what looks like a stack of cards into a sprawling paper fort.

Even though we've never met before, I feel like Caitlin Wheeler really gets me. This Baltimore-born multimedia artist, who recently completed a BFA in Printmaking at the University of Delaware, creates colorful characters who look lifted straight out of an instructional manual and drops them onto the large, negative space of the transparent silk tissue canvas. The end result is both eerie and incredibly compelling; the lost, vulnerable souls in this narrative are just like us.

"The characters in my work are inspired a bit by comics, old story books, and sometimes instructional illustration," Wheeler says. "Most of all they are inspired by people I see, the people I interact with. I'm particularly fascinated with the interactions of fellow 20-somethings, during this limbo between late adolescence and adulthood, when you're trying to live independently while still forming ideas about who you are and what you want to do. I sense an isolation. There's a definite frustration in the many failures of trying to develop intimate relationships in such an uncertain age."

It's no wonder that she says a soundtrack for her pieces would include Animal Collective (for their quirky beats), Joanna Newsom (for her bizarre, childlike innocence), Iron & Wine (for the tenderness in his lyrics) and CocoRosie (for their contradictory dark and playful nature).

To purchase Wheeler's work or view it online, please visit www.bluebottleart.com.

- Caroline Stanley

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