Welcoming visitors to the exhibition “Viewpoint” at the Iris and B. Cantor Art Gallery is a selection of mixed-media books created by Susan Schmidt, a member of the Visual Arts Faculty at the College of the Holy Cross.
As an exhibition, “Viewpoint” is a beautifully presented and fascinating show offering an excellent sample of contemporary art – everything from a theatre-like installation to photography to wood sculpture. The exhibition ends on December 8. Schmidt is one of nine distinguished faculty members invited to showcase the diversity within the visual art department.
Her enchanting books come in accordion style, layered with etchings, collaged, and assembled from repurposed materials, and employ text fragments and sentences, labels, sayings and other literary devices relating ideas and narrative descriptions. The subject of her work is a retelling of old folk tales, a genre that has long fascinated the artist. In the book “Once There Was & Once There Was Not,” text fragments reading “she was so terribly alarmed that the egg which she held in her hand fell into the bloody basin,” pull the viewer into the story; and by physically turning the pages the viewer/ reader experiences a real tactile encounter with art.
Leslie Schomp's Portraits
Visitors will also find conceptual video work by Rachelle Beaudoin who offers ironic and comical scenes of herself performing ordinary physical tasks such as struggling through deep drifts of snow and exercising while eating a cake and a donut. The scenes are equal parts hilarity and anxiety. Beaudoin explained that the performances are “introspective” exploring the pressures and contradictions she faces while “inhabiting the spaces of popular culture.”
An example of immersion installation is presented by Marguerite White. In “The Last Picture Show,” White created what she calls a “transitional space” or a “stage within a stage” an installation mimicking a child’s theatre where cutout shapes of birds, figures, and landscape details are illuminated by a flashlight as they spin slowly on an old record player turntable creating a rotating shadow-play. In this work White is experimenting with the concept of memory. By using the most simple and old fashioned of puppet and shadow theatre techniques to create illusions she is returning to the points of her own childhood bridging the past and the present. Her elements appear innocent but are indeed quite sophisticated in concept.
Taking again the subject of “self” is fiber artist Leslie Schomp who uses fibers as her drawing medium. Schomp gathered together, in another corner of the gallery, examples of her better known contemporary fabric and embroidery work. The most compelling of which includes miniature self-portraits painstakingly embroidered from hair and mounted in tiny dollhouse frames. In a past interview Schomp explained that she works with hair because it is both “beautiful and creepy” and is fascinated by historic examples of “hair objects” such as nineteenth century hair wreaths.
The Cantor Gallery organizes faculty exhibitions every three years providing an opportunity for students to see the creative scholarship that the faculty members pursue. The other nationally recognized exhibiting artists include Michael Beatty, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Cristi Rinklin, and David Gyscek. Examples of their current work and exhibitions can be found on their websites.
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