Amy Giovanna Rinaldi and Misha Davidoff's Final Show

Art for softness, for hardness.
For translation.
For communication of things that don’t fit into text,
Of nuance and complicated feeling
Of everything in between.

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold" is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective, conscious state of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes. The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives. People, places, or things may not complete a transition, or a transition between two states may not be fully possible. Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal. Plants such as seaweed (between sea and land) and mistletoe (between earth and sky) are not only liminal themselves, but are used in liminal rituals such as healing. One could also consider seals, crabs, shorebirds, frogs, bats, dolphins/whales and other "border animals" to be liminal. It should come as no surprise that these liminal creatures figure prominently in mythology as shapeshifters and spirit guides. Wounds are liminal in that a wound is in constant flux, either getting better or getting worse. It is a site of healing or infection (or both, simultaneously). Menstruation is a condition in which (like a wound) the boundary between the inside of the body and the outside of the body is broken. . Noon and, more often, midnight can be considered liminal, the first transitioning between morning and afternoon, the latter between days. Sex is a liminal act. Doors, windows, springs, caves, shores, rivers, volcanic calderas, fords, passes, crossroads, bridges, and marshes are all liminal. Major transformations occur at crossroads and other liminal places, a t least partly because liminality -- being so unstable -- can pave the way for access to esoteric knowledge or understanding of both sides. Liminality is sacred, alluring, and dangerous.

RH Factor

The first video I've ever made! Oh gosh.

So much thanks to Will Bangs for the music.




-Savannah

Squaring Off

Senior exhibition of Nick Wirtz and Noah Kalos

I could go on about the chairs I have seen, part 2

I could go on about the chairs I have seen, Helen and Cara

Some scenes from Cara Turett and Helen Stuhr-Rommereim's final show, which opened Friday, April 10th, 2009.

Thanks to Seth Schneer and John Seyfreid for the beautiful photos!

SEAM

Savannah Mirisola-Sullivan: SEAM

Arm Vein Detail

Chest Vein

Wrist Detail

Knee Detail

Skull Detail

Skull Sampler

Knee Sampler

Rib Cage Sampler

Pelvis Sampler

Installation


My grandmother passed away this fall. We had received the phone calls, the emails, the letters. In theory, I was expecting her death, but I was not prepared for my reaction to it. Instead of mourning, I hoarded. Things that were not important during her lifetime suddenly became excruciatingly dear to me. It became essential for me to keep her old socks, her gloves, her shirts that I had never seen her wear. I needed to physically hold on to her.

What do we leave behind when we die? This question plagues me. I sit around wondering about it, warm in my grandmother’s wool socks, aware of the time passing because of her watch on my wrist. This question was born originally out of the change that has become so constant in the last four years of my life. After living in the same house for thirteen years, I suddenly became nomadic: four years, eight homes. Just as my world shifted when my grandmother died, my departure from each place has been a real and dramatic change. Home and the self have been the variables; my body, the constant.

I am interested in the corporal. I miss my grandmother’s bodily presence, and it is my own physical being that carries me from place to place. The act of sewing has become a way to preserve my body in order to ensure that I have something to pass on when I pass on. Craft evokes feelings of familiarity and homecoming; anatomical drawings produce the opposite: sterility, unfamiliarity, alienation from the physical self. By combining the two, I am creating nostalgia for the physical body.