Good Grief

You say you’re brokenhearted? Actually, it feels like someone shoved their arms down your throat, clutched your heart, and wrung it out like a dishrag. You gagged repeatedly until you barfed out your soul. Then the poor thing was slowly torched on a spit. Now all that’s left is a charred, crumpled creature. If you feel this way, you’ll find company at Eric Firestone Gallery, which is showing hauntingly beautiful papier-mâché sculptures by Tucson’s Michael Cajero.

Rendered with shreds of trashed paper that look like they’re covered with black mold, the figures in “Michael Cajero: We Need to Dream All This Again” cower and crawl all over the floor, walls, and ceiling. A decrepit, hideous woman with jagged, thick locks of hair smokes a cigarette while hunched over her protruding potbelly. A naked man writhes and twists as if his body is rotting from the inside out. A puny, emaciated dog trembles in the corner. The works are so poignant and understanding, they’ll reach out and touch your soul (or what’s left of it, anyway).