Campus Resources | Saint Joseph's University
Boland Hall Gallery features student photography from the past 10 years. Students worked in large format, alternative processes and traditional 35mm shooting and darkroom printing. Their prints show the wide breadth of styles and processes taught in the Art and Art History Department at SJU.
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Social Fabric
Maurene Cooper and Eric Kunsman
August 22 – October 21, 2022
Artist Talk: September 22 @12:30 in person and on zoom
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Merion Hall Gallery presents Social Fabric, a photography exhibition featuring Helen Maurene Cooper’s The Caregivers and Eric Kunsman’s Before Noon; two photography projects that explore lives and relationships that bond communities. Based in Philadelphia, PA and Rochester, NY respectively, the artists share their experiences living in neighborhoods that bring people together and face challenges as one.
Helen Maurene Cooper’s The Caregivers is an ongoing social document of the photographer’s neighbors exploring caregiving among queer and heteronormative families during and after a time of self-isolation. The project began as a way for Cooper to meet and interact with her neighbors during the COVID-19 lockdown. After having moved back to Philadelphia from Chicago, Cooper found that she had not gotten to know her neighbors despite how densely populated her neighborhood is. During quarantine in March 2020, she saw an opportunity to meet these people by setting up her camera outside her home studio offering portraits to anyone willing to collaborate. By nature of many Philadelphians and because of the isolating conditions of the pandemic, people who passed her were “outgoing, forward, and nosy” enough to approach her and ask about the project.
Using an 8×10 camera and a photographic wet-plate collodion process, Cooper took a series of portraits for each couple or family that worked with her. During photography sessions, Cooper bonded with her community through discussions of parenting, caring for aging family members, and the difficulties of doing all this and more through a pandemic. From the start of COVID-19, the physical and mental demands for caretakers, especially women, became more extreme than they previously were. Through stories of nurturing and vulnerability from the people that Cooper photographed during this challenging time, the shared human experience of caretaking is revealed.
For the future of this project, Cooper hopes to rephotograph her neighbors over the years as a means to share what caretaking has been like for families both during and after COVID-19.
Eric Kunsman’s Before Noon captures the hopefulness found within communities living in areas with high poverty rates. Photographing people before the day has set in, as the title suggests, Kunsman finds how a fresh morning can bring positivity no matter what the situation.
Before Noon is a project stemming from his previous work, Felicific Calculus, which looked at the socioeconomic position of Rochester, New York and aimed to confute the negative stereotypes placed on it. In this new collection, Kunsman focuses on the people of Rochester and other poverty-stricken cities with a similar goal. Living and working in the city himself, the photographer approached neighbors he’s known for years as well as people he’s never talked to in hopes of showing how his community is happier than people make them out to be.
Hearing how people talk down about poor cities without having ever lived in one struck a chord with Kunsman. He describes how truly optimistic his neighbors can be and how their sense of community is invaluable. “Some of these people are a whole lot happier than the well-off neighbors I had in the suburbs,” he says. Whether it’s fixing someone’s broken down car or setting up a memorial for a lost one, these people look out for one another and find hope in unexpected ways.
Dee Feuda ’25, Gallery Exhibition Research Assistant
Maurene Cooper – “The Caregivers”
The Caregivers addresses the emotional and physical labor of parenthood and romantic partnership in my community during a global pandemic.
Using an 8×10 camera, the wet plate collodion process (ambrotypes) and the sidewalk in front of my home studio, I make portraits in public space of families and lovers.
Over a series of multiple sessions, I collaborate my subjects to tell intimate stories of how they nurture, support and protect each other. Through gesture, expression, the placement of bodies and the manipulation of perspective, I depict a wide range of queer and heteronormative families who live within walking distance of my front stoop. I use these portraits as a means to explorer caregiving not as a given role for a women but with the context of queer and feminist thought that sees this labor as a radical act.
The work weaves together a narrative of world-building, using public space and the politics of family and intimacy during a period of self-isolation.
Eric Kunsman – “Before Noon”
Before Noon is a new series that explores the power of hopefulness of the people in cities with extremely high poverty rates, the idea is that every individual has the whole day ahead of them before noon and a clean slate prior to the weight of the world setting in on any given day. Often, the weight of the world can take away the smiles one may have in the morning or lead to individuals relying on other means to help forget about that weight and feel carefree.
I want to show each individual’s hope, and community rather than the blight and misfortune many photographers focus on when not engaging with one’s surroundings. Yes, some photographs show the deterioration of the cities I am photographing, but those images do not contain individuals. Those images set the tone of the perseverance of the individuals living in these cities throughout the United States.
Gallery Talk 9/21 12:30-1:30 –
Sorry this event has been cancelled!
Join Justyna on Friday, the 24th to hear her speak about her work and
tour visitors through the gallery. Hope to see you there!
In conjunction with Philadelphia 20/20 Photo Festival
If unable to join in person, please join us live virtually via zoom!
Justyna Badach’s “Proxy War” exhibit features 16 large-scale gun powder and casein dichromate prints that comment on propaganda of war. The rather innocuous images come to life after examining their explosive composition and pernicious origination. The ISIS video stills which are the backdrop for the prints work in tandem with the authentic ISIS titles and Russian and American proselytizing language to illustrate the cunning methods used to turn violence into proud moments of male camaraderie. Badach’s work acknowledges the modern technology and social media used to attract followers, glorify military operations and emotionally desensitize viewers to the brutality of war.
Philadelphia-based artist Justyna Badach examines the hyper-masculinity and violence in the modern-day military and war propaganda in two incredible projects named Land of Epic Battles and Proxy War. In this series of large hand-made prints, Badach captures direct stills from ISIS recruitment videos and US and Russian’ War on Terror’ films about the Middle East. Badach’s inspiration for this project comes from her early work called Epic Film Stills, which focused on landscapes and explored how classic American Westerns glorified these places of genocides. In a new era of streaming and filming in 2014/15, Badach wanted to revisit the project by focusing on what masculine tropes looked like in today’s media. With the industry changing, ISIS recruitment videos circulated on the internet using similar visuals that American Western films used. ISIS is well aware of the Western appeal, and as Badach said, “It is a global language that terrorist groups understand very well, and they are appropriating it for their own purposes.”
Badach purposely used black powder in her prints in homage to the World Trade Center bombing; the dangers of using this black powder matched that of the subject matter. Black powder is an early form of gunpowder, but differs from modern gunpowder in that it is not smokeless. The process turned out challenging for numerous reasons. Shortly after 2001, black powder was put on a restricted list. Badach underwent an extensive search before a small gun shop finally sold it to her, “no questions asked,” for testing. Black powder is very difficult to combine with photographic material, and it took an entire year before Badach mastered the medium.
Land of Epic Battles’ images are titled after ISIS’s recruitment videos in which they appear. The titles are of utmost importance because they give context to what may not be inherently apparent to the naked eye. Badach mentions that “ISIS had a very specific titling sequence that they used,” so that the videos can easily be accessed by searching certain words to attract potential fighters from all over the world. ISIS strategically creates recruiting videos for different audiences by making them in several languages. The text only images are actual subtitles from the recruiting videos targeting an English or European audience. These prints demonstrate Badach’s concept that words are as powerful as imagery.
Proxy War demonstrates the Russian and US war propaganda films, and thus is an extension of Land of Epic Battles. Proxy War’s images are titled after what was said in the videos and US press conferences about the Middle East wars. Badach confirms the importance of viewing Proxy War and Land of Epic Battles side by side because “[The images] are from the same site; even if the story is told from a different point of view, it is still propaganda.” The triptychs are some of Badach’s favorite frames because of the arduous process which creates a deeper connection between artist and print. Each print requires four to six layers of coating and Badach says, “every additional coating is a risk for the print to get ruined.”
Badach explains that focusing on the hyper-masculine violence in this exhibit was significant because “as a woman, I am their primary victim.” Women and children suffer the circumstances of war, and it was crucial for Badach to have a voice and document the consequences of war. This project correlates with the current tragic situation in Afghanistan in many ways. Several pieces on display show locations in Afghanistan, such as Killing the Apostates in Revenge for the Monotheists and Bamiyan. In their recruitment films, ISIS purposely incorporated images that were appropriated from the Taliban because both terrorist groups actively recruit each other’s fighters. Bamiyan shows the site that once held a colossal ancient statue of Buddha destroyed by dynamite by the Taliban in 2001. ISIS includes images from the Taliban in their film because their actions are very similar; destroying ancient buildings and monuments, as seen in Palmyra #2. Badach warns the viewers that ISIS is “not so different from the Taliban, as they are the same thing under a different name.” It is crucial for the public to see this exhibit to raise awareness of war propaganda and better understand Afghanistan’s current events.
– Rebecca Elbaze, Gallery Exhibition Research Assistant
Bio
Badach arrived in the US as a refugee in 1980. She received her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and currently resides in Philadelphia, where she is an artist, educator, and museum professional. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad. Solo exhibitions include: Light Work Syracuse, White Columns New York, Gallery 339 Philadelphia, Blue Sky Gallery in Portland and Contemporary Art Center in Las Vegas. Badach’s images have been included in over 30 group exhibitions, most notably at the Michener Museum, Rick Wester Gallery, Catherine Edelman Gallery and the Australian Center for Photography. Her work has been reviewed extensively and images have been featured in Wired Magazine, Contact Sheet, F-Stop Magazine, Dummy Magazine and several exhibition catalogs. Badach’s work is the permanent collections of Portland Art Museum, Museet for Fotokunst Brandts, Odense, Denmark, Center for Photography Woodstock, Cranbrook Museum of Art, Rice University Library, Houston, TX, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA and Haverford College. She has been awarded an artist residency from Light Work, and grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Leeway Foundation and The Independence Foundation.
Artist Statement:
“It is evident . . . that terrorist organizations, alongside transnational corporate interests, are one of the more vigilantly opportunistic exploiters of ‘events, spasms, ructions that don’t look like art and don’t count as art but are somehow electric, energy nodes, attractors, transmitters, conductors of new thinking, new subjectivity and action.’”
—Seth Price from Dispersion, 2002
My work examines the transmutation of history and repackaging of violence though appropriation and re-contextualization of images derived from films created for a male audience. My latest project, Land of Epic Battles and Proxy War are comprised of large-scale, prints made using gun powder. The images depict scenes culled from the online archives of ISIS recruitment data streams as well as American and Russian military internet propaganda, released as part of the ongoing war in the Middle East.
Today the great landmarks of tradition have been destroyed, but without society proposing new ones in their place. In a recent book, La Vraie Vie, Alain Badiou conceptualizes male adolescence, “as the experience of disorientation following the dissolution of the patriarchal symbolic order in the West. For boys and men . . . there is no clear exit from the symbolic disorientation in a capitalist desert where traditional rites of initiation into adulthood such as a job and marriage no longer operate. . .. So, in the happy, anxious void where the Law of the Father once spoke, we now have revenge porn, trolling, and terrorism. Their nihilism is a mix of sacrificial and criminal heroism, and a general aggression toward the Western world. This aggression is based on forms of traditional and identitarian regression, on the debris of tradition that are offered to them.” Land of Epic Battles (2015-2018) focuses on the hyper-masculine, violent world of ISIS recruitment videos that grew out of these socio-economic, technological and cultural shifts that are occurring on a global level. Disseminated via YouTube, as well as through private, encrypted internet subscription channels, ISIS data streams are endemic of the larger proliferation of computer files and digital “info-war” visuals that are provided on demand and watched by choice, negating concerns about legality and morality that have traditionally defined mass-media content. Similarly, Proxy War (2018-present) examines the parallel world of Russian and US military internet propaganda that grew out of “the war on terror” and seeks to glorify military operations taking place across the Islamic world. As these two adversarial nations compete to maintain their sphere of influence in the region, they, like ISIS, employ the pervasive glorification of violence and wanton destruction as a tool to motivate their “followers”.
Working from the position of both censor and video editor, I isolate the single frames depicting sites that serve as backdrops for these displays of male camaraderie, acts of violence, and mutilations. The resulting screen captures do not overtly display the acts violence. Instead, the images give form to the info-war coded lexicon of methods, signs, and symbols of contemporary warfare. Through this coded iconography and the destructive potential of the gunpowder that is used to make the images, the violence of the source material is registered.
In Land of Epic Battles, the title for each image is taken from the ISIS video episode in which the image appeared, drawing our attention back to the horrific acts disseminated by these streams. These titles, such as The Necks Cutting; Crush Your Enemies; or My Revenge, lend context and form to what at first glance may seem like a series of random objects and sites. An image that resembles a graphite drawing of an empty truck in the desert or a helicopter hovering in a cloud-filled sky is indeed innocuous, until we’re told that the context is ISIS-produced media and that the print itself is made of explosives. The appropriation of language is also an important to the understanding of Proxy War, which take their image titles directly from language used during US and Russian press conferences on the war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Land of Epic Battles and Proxy War become the means through which we witness the pernicious forces at play in contemporary internet war media that employs the sophisticated tools and visual vocabulary of virtual reality games, reality TV, and DIY videos. Employing and subverting methods commonly used in the entertainment industry, ISIS and the military create media, that feeds on viewers’ addiction to social media, exploits the voyeuristic lure of reality TV, and nourishes their audience’s desire to watch what is socially taboo.
One of most striking features of the ISIS DIY “video streams” is their slick production strategies, and like the military messaging, their ability to continuous morph their distribution channels in order to avoiding attempts at image suppression or origin verification. It is clear that our collective experience is becoming increasingly fragmented and the reality of global vents is being defined and shaped by surreptitious media producers and algo-rhythms designed to getting as close as possible to viewers. As such, Land of Epic Battles and Proxy War registers the initial signs of a larger impending seismic shift that will inevitably alter our future collective experience and understanding of conflict and war.
The senior art majors and minors present their theses in varying mediums and themes. This exhibit is the culmination of their yearlong art capstone course. These young artists express their identities and visions that they have developed through their experiences and instruction during the course of their college careers.
The series “2020”, depicts real social and political events in a surreal but comprehensive way. If you were to ask anyone prior to 2020, their expectations for that year, I doubt they would mention anything that occurred. Yet, most know what has happened is very important to history. With Covid, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the contested election results, this year has become a turning point in the world and in this country. I wanted to make this work to remember how I felt during this time. I believe some of the strongest pieces of art are made in challenging times and in the future become bittersweet reminders of our own history. I want to inform and connect with others and to express these thoughts and feelings through this series. My idea of using photoshop and having images that are unrealistic, exaggerated and leaning toward science fiction, is to epitomize the idea that at times these events have felt unreal or impossible, so it only made sense to execute these images in a similar fashion. I use stark white boxes in several images to show isolation, emotion and separation. I created all of my images in the studio out of sets, which allowed me a lot of control with details, color and props incorporated. I am sharing my own, my family and my friends’ emotions during this process, making it personal.
I began photographing my family when I was young. I always loved being both behind and in front of the camera. My current series, titled “Pieces,” will be presented this April. People around me inspire me everyday and I strive to showcase the beauty and complexity of everyday life, even while in a pandemic. I am inspired by photographers Mary Frey, Asheleigh Coleman, and Sarah Hoskins. My goal is to capture intimate moments of people that I love. Pieces will be exhibited as a salon style presentation, with images of varying sizes. This series focused on the main aspects of my life; work, school, and friends, all while navigating through a global pandemic.
Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. Inaction is not an option. If we do nothing, humanity will die off. We already see the effects of our rapidly warming climate in our world today. In 2020 alone, we saw an increase in wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. The concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is at an all-time high in human history at 412 ppm. In August 2020, Death Valley reported the hottest temperature ever recorded. These instances will seem insignificant if we continue down the path we are on. If we continue on our destructive path humanity will cease to exist. We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, brought on by our own actions. However, if we act now, we can mitigate and perhaps even begin to repair the damage we have caused.
This series uses layered, laser cut photographs of our natural world with text about the climate crisis burned into the images. I am looking to highlight the beauty of our planet and at the same time, visibly show what we are destroying. I am photographing the beauty and wonder of the planet and juxtaposing my photographs with text about the climate crisis. The text, all taken from factual sources such as the New York Times and scientific sources, like NASA, allows the viewer to learn more about the climate crisis. The images in each piece connect to a particular habitat, place, or issue. This series is meant to educate and encourage viewers to look deeper into the climate crisis.
I have always enjoyed nature and the outdoors. My natural impulse has been to photograph beautiful places. However, at the onset of the project, I was determined to talk about climate change and not simply show beauty. Artists of all sorts, from photographers to painters have attempted to showcase the beauty of nature and encourage people to care about the environment. I decided to use the shocking statistics and facts to raise awareness in the hope that viewers would further educate themselves on the issues. The reality of the climate crisis is that what we do now, whether we act or do not act, will decide the fate of humanity.
Everyone has a story to be told and their stories are significant. On a daily basis we all have moments in our lives where we are interacting and interconnecting with each other. Feeling included in this diverse network of lives that construct our society, but at the same time conserving our individual uniqueness is what spawns’ new ideas and perspectives. The works in this series of drawings and paintings deal with the representation of diversity and inclusion. I have created a visual language of colorful geometric shapes that overlap and interweave. The drawings are done with the use of colored pencil on paper and the paintings are done with acrylic paint on canvas.
The hard-edged geometric shapes represent our personal identities. The varied shapes are playfully placed to interweave and overlap with each other while creating a balanced harmonious environment. The work references our diverse similarities and differences while taking into consideration our distinct personal characteristics. The translucent paint quality conceptualizes the framework of intersectionality as it relates to people’s identities and their experiences alone and with others. The vibrant bold colors are a representation of my own Mexican heritage and embraces the traditions which make up my identity.
My aim of this work is to challenge the viewer to examine what it means to be truly diverse and inclusive. The acknowledgement of the intersecting shapes incorporates the idea that everyone of us as an individual has had experiences of confronting discrimination and oppression. In creating these pieces, I want to bring about an awareness that although we are each different from one another, we can support, respect, value and empower each other. Each of our stories matter, and for this reason, the works are designed to be shown in whichever direction one chooses them to be displayed. Every viewer is free to experience the work how they choose and generate their own awareness of a diverse and inclusive society.
Traditions like Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism grabbed my attention and held it as I worked through the range of liberal art’s courses my english and philosophy degrees necessitated, as a student at Saint Joseph’s University. I had the opportunity to really dig into these philosophies, and as I did, I began to understand my art differently. Around the time that I was falling in love with ceramics and pottery, I was discovering a peculiar form of Buddhist aesthetics called Wabi-Sabi. As it turns out, Wabi-Sabi and ceramics are deeply and historically intertwined and I was quick to begin exploring the philosophy through my own work.
Traced back to 16th century Japan, Wabi-Sabi finds value and beauty in the imperfect. It praises things with rustic and non-uniform features in a conscious resistance to our innate gravitation towards perfection. Ceramic pieces in the style of Wabi-Sabi, like traditional Japanese tea cups, are visibly in a process of degradation and wear with the intention of representing the Zen ideals of nature, change, and individuality. I am currently exploring this combination of Wabi-Sabi and ceramics in my art minor capstone, where I hope to gain a deeper understanding of the forms and techniques of traditional Wabi-Sabi ceramics, while also developing my style and direction as a potter.
I love the idea of a process that naturally creates unique and unknown results. Entropy is a fundamental aspect of life and is a phenomenon that I embrace within my work. Everything that exists is subject to entropy and nothing ages without showing its effects. My aim is to create a body of work that relinquishes this struggle of appearances and perfection. Things have a fundamental tendency to change, to wear down. To hide from this fact is to hide from the world. My work is intended to stand as ceramic memento moris, each piece made unique and beautiful by their variances and imperfections. Authenticity is beautiful. My pieces are forthright and direct about their particularities and are intended to raise the questions like, “What are my disillusions?”, “What am I resisting that is out of my control?”, and “How can I be more authentic with myself and the world?”
Nature and biology have long been a source of mystery and inspiration for artists. The shapes and forms discovered under microscopes, in the depths of the oceans, and hiding in gardens feel otherworldly and beautiful in their strangeness. As humans we are drawn in by their elegant structures, sometimes at our own peril. For this assignment, students used clay and pinch pot building techniques to create sculptures inspired by organic forms from biology and nature.
Students explored different color schemes and traditional “opus styles,” or ways that mosaic pieces can be arranged, to create a specific type of rhythm and flow in a mosaic.
Face jugs can be found throughout history in Europe, Africa, Pre-Columbian America and especially in 19th century African-American folk arts. Fully-functional, it is said that slaves in the U.S. used the jugs for identity purposes on gravestones and to ward off evil spirits.
Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania
Sponsored by the Art & Art History Department and the Institute for Environmental Stewardship at
Saint Joseph’s University
The series Our Neighborhood juxtaposes sites of residential life in cities and towns across the
US from Texas to Pennsylvania, with the infrastructure of the petrochemical industry. If your
house is near an oil or gas well, a power plant or a refinery, you hear it, you smell it, you know it
is dangerous. It is however familiar. You are used to it. You accept it because either you have no
choice or it is your best choice. Either your grandparents built the house when they immigrated
from Poland or Mexico or this neighborhood is actually better than some others you can afford.
The sign “Poison Gas” somehow does not mean what it says and you put it out of your mind.
You are resigned to the dangers that threaten your future in exchange for a feeling of normalcy,
for convenience, for having a roof over your head right now.
We Americans all live in this house. This is our neighborhood, our home. Due to innovations in
hydraulic fracturing, the US is now the largest global producer of oil and gas, surpassing both
Saudi Arabia and Russia, at over 13 million barrels per day. The oil and gas business represents
about 8% of US GDP with over 10 million employees. At the same time, the burning of fossil fuel
is threatening to destroy life as we know it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
issued a report in 2018 stating that the global temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over
pre-industrial levels by 2040, causing calamitous worldwide damage. The need to reduce CO2
emissions is on a direct collision course with the expanding US oil and gas industry and its
stake in the US economy. While every single one of us emits around 15 metric tons of CO2
annually and uses alkanes, alkenes, naphthenes, benzene, butadiene, polypropylene,
polystyrene daily, the enormous infrastructure needed to extract, transport, and process these
petrochemicals is often easily overlooked. Each image in Our Neighborhood creates a visual
metaphor of what we all are living with, what we take for granted, and to what we have become
desensitized. Looking at the world we have created, without blinking, challenges resignation to
the status quo and climate change. It is a step towards action.
Goldsboro, Pennsylvania
Shippingport, Pennsylvania
Janine Gasarowski
Mikayla Carson
This collection of work was created by introductory drawing and painting students under the instruction of Professors Peter Bonner, Stephen Cope, Mary Henderson and Marta Sanchez.
The drawings are created with charcoal and pencil. Charcoal is an incredibly dynamic medium, it can be constantly changed and blended until the artist is satisfied. The softness of this medium lends itself to drawings focused on mass and movement of a subject. Charcoal is used for rendering the light, shadow, and contour of a subject. Many of the drawings displayed in this exhibition from Professor Sanchez’s class are life drawings. Students rendered these drawings from direct observation of a constructed scene in the Toland Hall studio. Still life is a popular genre of Western art and includes all kinds of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, game, wine and so on. Historically, still life drawings and paintings can be a celebration of
material pleasures such as food and wine.
Madison Buddenboln
Students in Steve Cope’s online class created drawings in a photorealism style. To keep the assignment fun and interesting, students were tasked to take a photograph of themselves, friends or family making a crazy face. They studied the photographs and created a pencil and charcoal drawing focusing on proportions, shading and highlights so that the emotion was captured in the drawing.
Cait Jacoby
Josephine Biancaniello
Students in Mary Henderson’s online painting 1 class studied historical examples of trompe l’oeil still life paintings which is a technique that dates centuries back. Painters use realistic imagery to create optical illusions so that the painting appears to be a three-dimensional image. This is very popular with theater set design. Students then set up a shallow-space still life in their houses using everyday objects and painted the scene using the techniques they learned.
Sharon Mashkovich
Sara Garstka
The first six weeks of the semester Peter Bonner focused on language, shapes, structures, color, drawing so that students were familiar and conversant with the language of painting. For one assignment late in the term, Peter Bonner instructed each student to choose what they wanted to paint, with a few conditions, namely it had to be personal (from heir own life experience) and they had to be excited by it. Professor and student then entered into a dialogue together to work through and refine ideas before starting the drafting and final painting process.
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
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