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UNO Art Gallery's Fall Season Opens with National Exhibition
A Painting
for Over the Sofa
 What's above your sofa? Does it
match the carpet and drapes, the fabric on your loveseat or the palette of
your walls? Does it matter?
These
questions and related issues are explored in "A Painting for Over the Sofa
(that's not necessarily a painting)," a national traveling exhibition that
opens the UNO Art Gallery's fall season. In most American homes, the sofa
often is the first piece of living room furniture selected. All other
questions about décor evolve around it, says Gallery Director Deborah-Eve
Lombard.
"The
sofa—and the painting, drawing, print, photograph or even sculpture placed
over it—conveys important information about the inhabitants."
"A
Painting for Over the Sofa" considers the couch as crux for American domestic
design and, more specifically, how wrongheaded a notion that can be. The
exhibition, organized by the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery (Miami) features 18
inflatable sofas and works of art that play with the idea of art versus home
decoration. "These are not knick-knacks for the den. Rather, they are
humorous, insightful and thought-provoking tableaux that invite visitors to
sit down and think," says Lombard.
Featured
artists include Mario Algaze, Ida Applebroog, Ken Aptekar, Louise Bourgeois,
Edouard Duval Carrié, Tim Curtis, Rico Gatson, Bruce Helander, Komar and
Melamid, Hung Liu, Pepón Osorio, Karen Rifas, Miriam Schapiro, Jaune
Quick-to-see Smith, Federico Uribe, Joe Walters, Deborah Willis and Wendy
Wischer.
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• Art Gallery's Fall Season
• Faculty in Person
• Ecoutez 2004-05
• College
of Fine Arts Calendar
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Got
music? If not, take in the annual Ecoutez! season beginning Sunday, Oct. 3,
with free admission to the U.S. Army Brass Quintet concert!
Ecoutez!
season tickets are $45 per person if ordered before Oct. 1, $55 after that.
Season ticket holders receive reserved parking adjacent to the Strauss
Performing Arts Center and preferred seating for the Army Brass Quintet.
General admission is $15 per event. Doors open 30 minutes prior to each
concert, which begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Strauss recital hall. For additional
information, or to order tickets, please call 554-3427.
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By Barbara Simcoe
In
examining my body of work since 1984, one can perceive a gradual shift in
focus from the male to the female, from the outer world to the inner. To an
overt involvement with Madonna and spiritual imagery. A nod, no doubt, to the
experiences of my childhood as colored by the ethnicity of my grandparents.
Until I
was about 10 years old I thought all elderly people spoke in Eastern European
broken English. My father's parents hail from Bialystok in Poland and from a
town near Minsk in what is now Belarus.
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To see Barbara Simcoe's Lithuanian paintings, click on
the links below.
Annunciation
Aritone
Arrival
Dievas
Latvian Madonna
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 Until I was about 10 years old I
thought all elderly people spoke in Eastern European broken English. My
father's parents hail from Bialystok in Poland and from a town near Minsk in
what is now Belarus. My mother's parents both are from the same village in
northern Croatia, near Rijeka. Woven into the lives and culture of many such
Eastern Europeans is Catholicism, another strong influence on me growing up.
This culture and religion are inextricably bound together in my memory, in
particular the symbolism, imagery and devotion to the Madonna.
In 1996 I
began integrating such aspects of my identity into my artwork. Change came
gradually, piece by piece, as I explored ways of dealing with imagery in a more
metaphorical manner without direct and overt symbolism. I wasn't then and am
not now interested in an insipid spirituality; I am interested in making works
that deal with the tougher, more difficult aspects of spirituality and in
developing pictorial ideas that pose for the audience scenarios that may not be
immediately understood and that are quietly unsettling; much like the literal
darkness of the Black Madonna or Virgin, an image type that existed in European
painting and sculpture for many centuries alongside more conventional and
better-known Marian representations.
The Black
Madonna archetype very likely is a vestige from ancient world imagery of
fertility earth goddesses and directly connects to the idea of the Christian
Mother of God as manifestation of the feminine aspect of the divine. The
original symbolism behind the darkness of the images may correspond to the
darkness of the earth and the need for perennial agricultural fertility. On a
spiritual level, it can be metaphorical of the need to enter into darkness in
order to be transformed.
This is a
powerful and very old idea, but one that probably does not have a lot of
currency in our contemporary culture. None-theless, it is the central idea that
preoccupies me as an artist.
Around
the same time in the mid-1990s that my work began to change, I also became
intrigued with the idea of applying for a Fulbright Scholarship to study in my
ancestral home. When that intrigue evolved into serious consideration, I
decided to experience the land firsthand before committing long-term, and in
May 2002 joined UNO's music department on its two-week Baltic Concert Choir
tour. That included a visit to one of the university's sister schools, Siauliai
University in Lithuania, the southernmost Baltic country. This provided the
opportunity to meet the places and people I would be around during an extended
Fulbright stay, and I loved it.
I
returned to Omaha and immediately began working on my Fulbright application.
The process was long and tedious and I did not receive official word of my
acceptance until April 2003.
Less than
a year later, in January 2004, I left again for Lithuania, this time for a
five-month stay. Nothing really prepares you for the shock of leaving your
family, home and everything you're familiar with to live in a small city in a
small Eastern European country for almost half a year. My solution to that was
to get to work almost immediately after arriving in Siauliai University, where
I was to teach a class in Photoshop. That started a wonderful period of four
months of nearly uninterrupted work on paintings, drawings and digital pieces.
Some of
these works I displayed during a show at the American Center in Vilnius toward
the end of my stay. "Arrival," "Dievas" and "Passageway" were grouped together,
relating my experience at the Ausros Vartu shrine in Vilnius, a major
pilgrimage site that houses a 16th-century Black Madonna painting. "Aritone,"
"Annunciation" and "Latvian Madonna" incorporated folk and winter imagery from
Siauliai, as well as portraits of a Siauliain friend, Aritone, and my cousin,
Arina, a medical student in Riga, Latvia. "Annunciation" also has the blurred,
distant figure of a woman working by a window. All three suggest a Baltic
manifestation of the Madonna. The tree imagery in each refers to the ancient
Lithuanian belief system that held all trees and forests to be revered, some
even sacred. The trees also are a personal reference to my mid-winter arrival
in Lithuania, the light and bare trees of those first months remaining
prominent in memory.
I also
spent a total of about four weeks traveling. Visits were made to relatives and
sites in Vilnius, Latvia, Poland and the Czech Republic. My husband, Lee
Murray, joined me toward the end of my stay and we flew to Croatia, spending a
week visiting relatives in Kukuljanavo, about 15 kilometers southeast of
Rijeka.
My
heritage played a large part in deciding to pursue a Fulbright and the
experience, I feel, has brought me closer to making the kind of art I want to
make. Symbolism has become more integrated into my thinking, more meaningful
and authentic.
What I
realized in the mid-1990s was that I felt I was missing something. Perhaps it
was really an acknowledgment of a need to look for or look at something that
was there my entire life. Whether or not one can see direct evidence of my
heritage in my work is not the most important thing, however. The importance, I
think, is having achieved greater clarity and acceptance—about myself as a
person, artist and teacher and about how I want to spend the rest of my life as
an artist.
Returning
to the places where my grandparents and their parents lived was like a
homecoming. Having experienced that made the clarity possible.
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September through December
Art & Art History
Shows
held in UNO Art Gallery, 1st Floor, Weber Fine Arts Building. Opening
receptions begin 6:30 p.m.
Sept. 12-Oct. 8
A Painting for Over the Sofa (that's not
necessarily a painting). Opening Reception Sept. 10.
Oct. 20-Nov. 5
Racing Towards Perfect Order. Opening
Reception Oct. 15
Nov. 14-23
Fall 2004 UNO Art Student Exhibi-tion.
Opening Reception Nov. 12
Dec. 6-22
Fall BFA Thesis Exhibition. Opening
Reception, Dec. 3
Barbara Wilson
Memorial Lecture Series
Lectures held in UNO Art Gallery
Oct. 6—7 p.m.
Funding the Arts, Panel
Discussion, 7 p.m.
Oct. 20—Noon
Bethany Springer, Installation Artist,
Noon
Nov. 4—7 p.m.
Sandy Winters, Visiting Artist Sculptor
and Painter
Nov. 10—7 p.m.
Barbara Simcoe, UNO Associate Professor
of Art, 'Pilgrimage.'
Nov. 17—Noon
Gerit Grimm, Bemis Artist in Residence
Dec. 6 & 8—Noon
Thesis Talks, Graduating UNO BFA
Students
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Masters & Music Series
*Sunday
evenings at 5 p.m. in the UNO Art Gallery, 1st Floor, Weber Fine Arts
Building. Reception with artists follow lectures/ performances. Call 554-2402
for ticket information.
Oct. 3
The Harpsichord in Music and Art,
Professor James Johnson, Piano & Harpsichord Artist; Professor James Czarnecki,
Art Historian, Professor
Music
Performances
start at 7:30 p.m. in Strauss Performing Arts Center Recital Hall unless
otherwise noted. Call 554-2335 for Resonate tickets.
Sept. 26
Resonate: Faculty Artist Kara Hulsey,
Bassoon
Sept. 28
UNO SPO presents Althea Rene, Jazz
Flutist
Oct. 3—3 p.m.
Resonate: Faculty Artist Wayne
Kallastrom, Organ
Oct. 10
Resonate: Faculty Artist Wendy Eaton,
Mezzo-soprano
Oct. 22
UNO Chamber Orchestra
Oct. 31
Symphonic Wind Ensemble
Nov. 2
Faculty Showcase
Nov 16
Studium Chorus of Lithuania
Dec. 1
UNO Percussion Ensemble Concert
Dec. 3
Prevailing Winds IV-Symphonic Wind
Ensemble, University Concert Band, & UNO Jazz Ensemble
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Dec. 4—4 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
UNO Concert Choir and University Chorus
Holiday Concert
Dec. 7
Vocal Studio Recital, Students of Dr. Z.
Randall Stroope
Dec. 8
Flute Studio Recital, Students of Dr.
Christine Beard
Dec. 9
UNO Chamber Orchestra
Dec. 11
NMTA Variety Show
Theatre
Performances
start at 7:30 p.m. in UNO Theatre, Weber Fine Arts Building, unless otherwise
noted. For tickets, call UNO Theatre Box Office, 554-2335.
Oct. 7-9, 13-16
Metamorphoses
Oct. 28-30, Nov. 3-6—6 p.m.
UNO Student Showcase, The Rimers of
Eldritch, WFAB 006
Nov. 18-20, Dec. 1-4
The Playboy of the Western World
Writer's Workshop
Readings
start at 7:30 p.m. in UNO Art Gallery, 1st Floor, Weber Fine Arts Building,
unless otherwise noted.
Missouri Valley Reading Series
Sept. 22
Michelle Boisseau
Oct. 13
Bill Holm
Nov. 3
John Price
Dec. 8
Mary Helen Stefaniak
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