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.

Nick Wirtz' Show

Artist Statement

I would posit that the comic, as a modern art form, shares notable historical similarities with film, the other narrative medium of the age. Both have struggled for legitimacy as an art form, but I believe that comics now lag behind. There are precious few works in the comic world that are recognized for their vision, and even fewer of these are known for their artists, and I do not believe that this is due to a lack of recognition, but a lack of vision.

But, I hope for a change in the medium. In the same way that image in film is as important as the dialogue, I believe that comics, as a visual narrative medium needs not a hierarchy of aspects, but a more thorough and even synthesis. I believe that the comic medium needs a shift towards Lazslo Moholy-Nagy’s concept of the Typophoto. He envisioned an experimental medium in which text and image were not only equally relevant to communication, but were inseparable and, in some cases, indistinguishable from each other. I strongly believe in the spirit of his proposal. In short, it is high time that the visual language of comics evolves.

I chose the mode of adaptation as an experiment in passing down a text. When one retells something, it is naturally transformed: tthere is another voice and another experience added to the narrative. Ray Bradbury’s work has always affected me on a very visual level, and it was this personal visual experience that I attempt to evoke in my retelling of his work. What I connect with are his worlds, his atmosphere, his pacing, and I want to pass on this experience. The text creates the narrative, and the images make the world.

Note: These are intended to be included in a collection of somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen short stories, making a rough chronology of humanity, from the late Nineteenth Century onward.

Images from "Kaleidoscope"

Pages from "The Scythe"

Installation Photos

Hannah's Senior Studio Show SEAM