Art Review: Bridging Through the Arts

This week I went to the MCC gallery Bridging Through the Arts: Transracial Community Building and even though they had yet to put the information cards up for each piece I enjoyed it all the same, I almost prefer that I don't know what every piece is about. My favorites of the exhibition include:

Evan Bissell: What Cannot Be taken Away: Families and Prison Projects - Evan Bissel's work instantly grasped my attention not because of the beautiful paintings but of the hand drawn images that accompanied the prints that pointed out features that symbolized different things ti each of the subjects, all former prisoner's attempting to get their lives back together. The small figure in the distance of the first piece is the man's daughter who he considers his rock but also knows the great distance between them because of his actions. The writing in the 4th image is the subject's own which talks about how easy it is for him to forgive others but how near impossible it is to forgive himself for what he has done.





Linda Vallego: Censored - Through my own research I found that this piece is part of a series called Censored. The Newspaper documents the "Inaguration of the Pope" as whited-out on the top of the page and shows the tremendous crowd at the Vatican with who I can assume are muslim women looking on. White-out is used to censor the eyes and mouths of the Pope and the Cardinals (?) that surround him, the front opening of the Vatican, and the rings and finger-tips of clapping hands. Super-imposed on the newspaper are what appear to be film strips that present striking color to the image. My favorite piece in the gallery, I loved Vallejo's use of multi-media to make her critisim of the Catholic church very apparent.

Estandarte IV, 2006

Shizue Seigel - Seignel's etching "Blood on Your Face" was very eye catching to me in a room otherwise so filled with color. I love the mix of the gothic and the surreal in the etching and the dark subject matter which includes a grim reaper-like figure, an ingured moon and writhing humans along with the thick seperation from the top and bottom with a thick white line makes me think this must be hell and an earth that is almost the same. So erie. It also reminds me quite a lot of Max Ernst's (aka my new found love) work.

Blood on Your Face