"The Ballad of Helen Keller and Rip van Winkle" is a painting in "A Brief History of Everything," the show at City Gallery at Chastain by Travis Pack, recipient of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs' Emerging Artist Award for 2005. Executed in Pack's signature faux-naif style, the painting is one of a series using historical or literary figures to symbolize societal dilemmas and personal/existential difficulties.

The floating words and pictures form a loose associative web, a strategy that the late Jean-Michel Basquiat popularized internationally some 20 years ago, and one that has served many Atlanta artists well since.

If a ballad of Helen Keller and Rip van Winkle actually existed, it would tell the tale of a deaf and blind woman who overcame her disabilities and achieved worldwide fame, plus that of a legendary male sleeper out of step with the world into which he awoke. The addition of words like "pathos" and the figure of a clown suggest a tale of incompatible relationships (which Pack confirms when asked). The picture's other elements, generally balanced but going off in all directions, reinforce an impression of the barely controlled chaos symbolized by the difficult juxtaposition of Keller and van Winkle.

As Pack notes, the works are both self-revelation and an exploration of the meanings to be gotten from figures of history and the imagination --- which is to say, figures of the imagination, since we tend to turn the lives of real people either into edifying myths or entertainment. Pack may not have worked out all the issues of his personal symbolism, but the work's ambitious vision indicates why he received the award and this solo exhibition.