Category: 2020-2021 Exhibitions

Lavett Ballard – “Just Like A Woman”

By In 2020-2021 Exhibitions, Archived Exhibitions, Exhibitions

August 28 – Oct 1, 2020
Merion Hall Gallery


Artist Talk, Friday, September 11, 4pm.
To reserve a spot in person, please email jbracy@sju.edu.  There will be a 20 person limit.  Click the registration link to attend the event virtually via a zoom webinar.

Lavett Ballard is a contemporary artist who uses collage to interrogate presumptions about race, gender, and perception. Her collages combine archival photography, magazine cutouts, and a wide range of materials, such as copper foil, wax, and even hair, and she adheres them to particle board, birch, and even old fences. Her process welcomes accident, which highlights their materiality. Ballard’s collages put past and present into dialogue with each other and encourage viewers to look more closely while at the same time taking in the picture her various sources create. The artist conducts a great deal of research to find her images, and the story behind the person is just as important, if not more important, than the image itself. In Ballard’s images of women, the women tell their own stories.

– Emily Hage, PhD.
Chair, Art and Art History Department
Associate Professor, Art History

 

 

1955: The Bus Riders, Demanding Dignity was created by mixed-media artist Lavett Ballard for the cover of TIME magazine as a part of their 100 Women of the Year in History project.  Ms. Ballard described the moment that she received the email from TIME magazine commissioning her to create a piece for the project as “surreal”.  She thought that the email was a prank but then went on to speak with D.W. Pine, the Creative Director of TIME magazine, two days later.

The piece is constructed on reclaimed wood fencing and features a color palette of gold, purple, blue, yellow, and white. Rosa Parks is featured in the center.  Ms. Ballard was allowed almost complete artistic freedom with the project. Ms. Ballard was only instructed to highlight Rosa Parks and the other women who started the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955; Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith.  All of these women were arrested for sitting in front of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Ms. Ballard’s work features women who go unrecognized which is why she was the perfect fit for this project.  Other unrecognizable women are featured in this piece from newspaper cutouts.  Of these women Ballard says they “had a life, a family, and it has been erased.  All there is is that snapshot that tells a little bit of their life story.”  Ms. Ballard uses wood fencing as a canvas for her pieces due to the connection she identifies between wood and history. She believes wood is “stuck in time”, making it the perfect backdrop for this historical piece. The yellow roses build the narrative of the artwork because they were used a symbol of freedom during the Civil Rights movement.  Ms. Ballard said that she wanted to use the term freedom without including the actual word in the art.  Around Rosa Park’s head is a gold halo or crown. Ms. Ballard likes to make the women in her work look like goddesses, making these women who have gone unrecognized look powerful. The background of the piece is meant to look like a starry night.

Ms. Ballard called the release of the artwork on the cover of TIME “bittersweet” due to it coinciding with the COVID-19 Pandemic.  She hopes that soon people will be able to see the artwork in person to fully appreciate it.  Saint Joseph’s University is the first public display of this piece as well as Broken Yet Healed, The Shaman and The Givers.

~ Elisabetta Mannello ‘21
Gallery Exhibition Research Assistant

 

Mosaics -Student Exhibit

By In 2019-2020 Exhibitions, 2020-2021 Exhibitions, Archived Exhibitions, Exhibitions

Mosaics
September 2020

Amanda Herzig ’22

Text by Elisabetta Mannello ‘22, Gallery Exhibition Research Assistant

The pieces featured in this collection come from Professor Jill Allen and Professor Patrick Coughlin’s Mosaics I classes.  Mosaics I is a class that studies “tesserae”.  Tesserae are the small pieces of ceramic tile or glass used to create mosaics.  Many mosaic techniques are explored in the class.  In the traditional method, students roll out slabs of clay which are fired, painted with glaze (providing the color) and then fired again.  The colored tile slabs are broken down into smaller pieces to fit into the designs.  The smaller pieces are then adhered to the wood or cement board backing.  Finally, grout is used to fill in the empty spaces between the tile.
Chelsea Evans ’21

Some pieces featured in this display are from the Fall 2019 Mosaics class.  They are the pieces that were inspired by the theme “Women We Respect”, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in America.  The students chose a woman who has inspired them personally and designed a mosaic after them.  They first traced the image of the woman onto a slab of clay and then carved the outlines into sections of color and value, which is a more contemporary approach.  They did not break the image up into smaller pieces, which is the traditional method of creating mosaics.
Isabella Africa ’22

Professor Jill Allen hopes that her students came away with an understanding of historic mosaic techniques while realizing that they can use their new knowledge to discover unique building techniques, exploring their own artistic voices.

Melissa Rickards ’20

Professor Coughlin’s class created two projects, a repetitive tile piece and a small tile piece.  The students start out with an image or drawing and study the colors and tonal values in order to replicate it.  Serana Pellegrino’s piece represents herself and someone close to her resting in a hammock, “simply appreciating all the simple things around”.  She was inspired by nature, which is where she says she finds herself.  She created it from a vision, sketching and coloring it first and then creating the mosaic.  Serana used the knowledge she obtained from class on translating color gradients into mosaic to create the piece.

Serana Pellegrino ’20