Art Awaits

Posted by Brandon Ghigliotty and Shayla Blatchford in Visual Arts

Story by Brandon Ghigliotty/Photos by Shayla Blatchford

The main lobby of the Thaw Art History building greets me with a faux bathroom. In place of a mirror, a screen plays looped video above its sink. The installation crowds the main lobby and forces visitors into the rest of the building.

A large piece beckons at the end of the hallway, a many doored wooden box around five feet tall—its flanks draped in black cloth. Rusty hinges flex while the apparatus behind it ticks and strains.

The work in the hallway, part of a joint exhibition entitled Range that will be shared with Universidad del Mar in Chile, continues past the restrooms with the sketch of a tree trunk. The illustration’s color defies the verdant nature of the piece, with its bruised, purple coloration exacerbating the veins of the tree’s trunk. While examining the piece, a figure approaches from my peripheral vision. I shift my weight and scoot out of her way, greeting her.

She nearly passes before I recognize her: Linda Swanson, chair of the art department.

I begin to introduce myself, but I’m interrupted by her. “If you want to talk, you’ll have to keep up,” she says.

I roll to the balls of my feet and spring up after her as she strides down the passageway. Photographer Shayla Blatchford and I follow Swanson to the building’s kitchenette. She multi-tasks while speaking to us. Swanson punches the microwave and trades out mugs, before she splits tubes of instant coffee over them. She tells me about a recent event within the Art Department. Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s Kristaan Villela, who holds a doctorate with an emphasis in Pre-Columbian Art, hosted a lecture on the role of the Apocalypse throughout mankind’s history. The event consisted of a brief introduction, a lecture by the artist, then closed with an open discussion of the topic.

With the coffee finished, Shayla and I follow Swanson back to her meeting and part ways promising to keep in touch.

Returning to the hallway, a sketch proclaims “God is Woman”, another just below it, entitled Peaceful Terrorism reads:

My body is not up for auction.

wearing a skirt

tight jeans

low cut shirt or

whatever the fuck I wanna wear

it’s personal space.