Visiting Artist Sara Schneckloth Gives New Feel to Art
Marquita Chisolm
Issue date: 3/3/09 Section: Features
When faced with the trouble of losing seven loved ones, including her father and mother, all within a matter of a few years, Sara Schneckloth, associate Professor of drawing at the University of South Carolina, channeled that energy into creating her vision of what art could be.
All of her art work was created on the basis of questions. How do we hold memory? How do memories hold us? Her work which is on display at SC State's Fine Arts Center (FAB) Gallery, primarily deals with the imagined microbiological systems rendered on a macro- scale.
She envisions and creates cells, organs, fluids, and tissues, and seeks to assemble the elements into new systems of organic relationship and connection. In her exhibit entitled "Open Gestures: (re) Active Drawings," Schneckloth, adds a softer feel to art through her artistic ability.
Unlike exhibts by other artists, Schneckloth breaks past tradition by allowing many of her spectators to step into her realm by touching and feeling her art, so as to feel the energy that she used to produce her work.
Some of her first drawings were those of reliquary drums that were used in Central West Africa to contain magical things or the remains of ancestors and drawings of things that she had inherited and found much comfort in.
"Open gestures (re) active drawing, which happens to be my favorite collection; it allows the audience to actually experience the art hands on and I found it to be really relaxing," said Schneckloth.
"I believe that the act of drawing is a way of residing in multiple states of awareness, - of present, past, future," she continued; "of what one is, has been, and hopes to become - of the physical, the mental, and the formal."
The USC professor says she draws as a way to see more deeply, both inside and out, and to elevate the act of seeing to a process that is fully engaging of both body and mind.
"In the gesture of a drawing, there abides the question of how human beings hold memory," she said. "I care about how the body holds its history, and how that recollected history can be performed through the act of making embodied signs."
Jim Arendt, curator, also noted that Schneckloth art could influence students in many ways, challenging them to look outside the box and be unique.
"I simply believe it's a breath of fresh air," he said. "Sara Schneckloth's work can be viewed in the Fine Arts building until March 13."
All of her art work was created on the basis of questions. How do we hold memory? How do memories hold us? Her work which is on display at SC State's Fine Arts Center (FAB) Gallery, primarily deals with the imagined microbiological systems rendered on a macro- scale.
She envisions and creates cells, organs, fluids, and tissues, and seeks to assemble the elements into new systems of organic relationship and connection. In her exhibit entitled "Open Gestures: (re) Active Drawings," Schneckloth, adds a softer feel to art through her artistic ability.
Unlike exhibts by other artists, Schneckloth breaks past tradition by allowing many of her spectators to step into her realm by touching and feeling her art, so as to feel the energy that she used to produce her work.
Some of her first drawings were those of reliquary drums that were used in Central West Africa to contain magical things or the remains of ancestors and drawings of things that she had inherited and found much comfort in.
"Open gestures (re) active drawing, which happens to be my favorite collection; it allows the audience to actually experience the art hands on and I found it to be really relaxing," said Schneckloth.
"I believe that the act of drawing is a way of residing in multiple states of awareness, - of present, past, future," she continued; "of what one is, has been, and hopes to become - of the physical, the mental, and the formal."
The USC professor says she draws as a way to see more deeply, both inside and out, and to elevate the act of seeing to a process that is fully engaging of both body and mind.
"In the gesture of a drawing, there abides the question of how human beings hold memory," she said. "I care about how the body holds its history, and how that recollected history can be performed through the act of making embodied signs."
Jim Arendt, curator, also noted that Schneckloth art could influence students in many ways, challenging them to look outside the box and be unique.
"I simply believe it's a breath of fresh air," he said. "Sara Schneckloth's work can be viewed in the Fine Arts building until March 13."
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