Hygienic: Where everyone is an artist and everything is art

New London — Mark Dixon of Old Lyme is a fisheries biologist by profession.

But on Saturday, for the duration of Hygienic XXXIII, the 33rd annual art extravaganza run by the downtown New London art society, Hygienic Art Galleries, Dixon was very much an artist.

No stranger to the annual show, he was among the first wave of exhibitors to turn out at 8 a.m. Saturday for the opening of the doors, what turns out to be a polite rush for the best wall space.

The show, which kicks off a two-week series of events, is known best for its lack of rules: no judging, no censorship. Everyone is an artist and everything they bring is art.

Sometimes, it is also political, sometimes vaguely pornographic and often a conversation starter.

This year's show, which runs through Feb. 11, includes a toilet bowl full of candy, a photograph depicting Ronald Reagan waving from the back of a limousine on Bank Street in 1988, a handsome photograph of New London's new whale tail fountain, a sweet memorial to a beloved dog and a spoof of actor Mel Gibson.

Dixon brought a piece he calls Slaw Revealed.

It's actually a clever little wooden device that cuts cabbage to make coleslaw.

The installation included a book of photographs — Dixon is also a photographer — of big heads of cabbage on their way to becoming slaw.

Last year, Dixon hung a piece that featured a strobe light inside a plastic head.

"That's the great thing about the Hygienic," Dixon said. "You can do something different. It's for anyone and everyone to come out."

Some of the exhibitors are artists who bring some of their most interesting or favorite work.

Gretchen Hatfield of Noank brought a drawing she did on birch bark. It depicts a 19th-century photograph she saw at the Peabody Museum of a horse that had been hand painted, with a series of symbols across its back.

"I like the idea of animal as canvas," Hatfield said.

Hatfield, too, said she is a longtime exhibitor at the Hygienic.

"It's camaraderie. It's a community collaboration," she said. "It's a huge statement about the soul of New London in terms of the art experience."

Another artist, Sarah Ficca of Deep River, brought a large plastic jar, once a big container for animal crackers, filled with her hair. It's hair she said she's been collecting from her brush since she finished art school, at the University of Hartford, in 2006.

It's a lot of hair.

Ficca said she was thinking about putting a sign of the jug suggesting people could feel free to take a hair ball.

"It's about shedding, shedding the ideas they put in your head when you are in a contained art institution" she said.

Maria Bareiss, a Hygienic volunteer who helped sign in the artists Saturday morning, said more than 150 people turned up in the first hour, a typical number.

She said she saw a lot of new faces this year, though.

The art, too, seems to be growing, she said.

"We are seeing bigger pieces, a lot more big pieces," she said.

d.collins@theday.com