Ali Kasper, Student Work

Student Work, Masked Identity

Photograph
Ali Schaper

Video Still
Taylor Adkins

Photograph
Arielle Ebenholtz

Photograph
Kelsey Schirard

Video Still
Katherine Lombardi

Students Working In The Studio, Masked Identity Assignment, Spring 2012

Jessica Windisch, Poet

Artist - Rebecca Pantin


The Fairer Sex

Low hanging fruit teases the eye,
manufactured by Discord only
for the Fairest.

Like Helen, whisked away to Paris,
we are homesick – those of us punished
for the Fairest.

Mirror, mirror watch her fall when her
whale-bone-crushed ribs fail to hold
on the broken spine of a well-spent mule.
Organs welded together for 18-inch waists – the pain
might be worth it to be deemed by him
the Fairest.

An hour-glass figure and a silent tongue,
a lady in her place is a desirable one.
That old bitter-tasting apple might rot if not
for the Fairest.

Your flesh is the sin of the ages,
sear it off at the stake for crimes
of education, flirtation, menstruation.
Pain is best received if you bear it.
We bear it bare naked, dragged by the ankles
through town, adulterous examples
of the Fairest.

But when Paris took the gift –
summoner of a thousand ships,
did he know the consequences
for the Fairest?

They’ve bought us and sold us and given us
as gifts – we’ve been war-spoils even,
beasts of burden, trophy wives.
Anything and all things
but stripped of our pride
in this futile quest to claim
the Fairest.

Rebecca Pantin.  Measures approx. 24" high and base is approx. 30" x 24".   Link here to see process photos.  

Tom Bosworth, Poet

Artist - Caralyn Farrell 




9/11/01

Two steel birds flew low in autumn,
Waiting to plunge into the tall metal.
Open wounds bleed fuel, fire, smoke:

Planes headed East, West, South,
Ladies in blue onboard scan rows,
Aisles cleared, they prepare Flight
Ninety-Three for ascent into the blue.
Every man knows not their fate that
Sets into September’s sky.

Crash waves shake Manhattan,
Ravishing downtown delis and bars.
Ashes sift to the ground, gray
Snowflakes too early for the poor,
Hungry children of men lost in the pile.
East coast reports come first, frantic—
Death tolls climb with every man’s fall.

Into Arlington, the five-sided sanctuary,
Not known for its weakness,
Trembles and shudders yet another blow,
Opens its side: a wound to the world.

The fourth, the final—Flight 77 spins,
Hammers the hard soil and alas the
East coast assault of the air ceases.

Twins sit in Sarasota while George
W. Bush reads, animated, alive,
Imitating the goats and pets, turning
Nice pages of the classroom book.

Tears sting,
Open mouths gape,
Washington screams,
Eagle cries,
Rumsfeld reads,
September 11th.

Caralyn Farrell.  Found objects, approx 10" tall by 8" wide.  Link here to read Caralyn's comments about the work and her process.  

Sydney Norwood, Poet

Artist - Haley Powers and Justin Sooter


In 1605, Guy Fawkes was part of a conspiracy to blow up Parliament. He was caught on November 5th, and every year a celebration is held to celebrate thwarting the plot. This is Guy Fawkes Day, or Bonfire Night.

Remember (Bonfire Night)

A crowd gathers in London to celebrate
the aversion of a Parliamentary disaster by fire.
Guy Fawkes, a latecomer, gets the brunt of the blame,
his effigy dumped unceremoniously onto the pyre.
Flames latch onto the tent of sticks quickly, red glow rising.
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
Citizens revel, and fireworks are shot into the sky—
an odd gesture when the subject is gunpowder.
Four-hundred and six years passed, the tradition remains.
“A penny for the Guy” funds their festivities as
thousands of people gather to remember.
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Contemporaries made Guy a symbol of the revolution.
They wear his visage as a sign of anarchy.
Funny to wear the face of a proponent of theocracy.
So forget not his likeness, or the gunpowder plot,
just overlook the details and remain Anonymous.

Justin Sooter.  

Wood, approx. 3' x 2'

Statement: Guy Fawkes was burned at the stake for treason against a country that no longer supported his religion. His condemnation that day and for all time has forever defined the United Kingdom. The memory of the famous rebel will always be burned into the history of one of the greatest and oldest nations of all time.

Haley Powers.  

Wood, marker, string.

approx. 3' x 4.5'

Sara Fornes, Poet

Artists - Kristen Duke and Kasha Fay


This poem was inspired by the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard. She was kidnapped at age 11 and was held captive for eighteen years. She was raped several times and had two kids before the age of 18.


Stolen

I cannot hear the voices that
you are so desperate for me
to hear- there are no angels.
I cannot see the purpose of
my imprisonment. I cannot
understand why you took me
from my mother. I can only
feel my last touch of freedom,
the pinecone I grabbed before
I was paralyzed and dragged
into the monster’s car. A stolen
life. Everything is silent and still.
The sounds begin to haunt me. The squeaky pull out couch bed, where you robbed me of my virginity. The rattle of the lock on the door, I would dread hearing your footsteps nearing to unlock my safety. These handcuffs are rubbing my wrists raw.
They are fuzzy but it doesn’t help. I cannot ask for you to remove them. I cannot ask for a toothbrush or toilet. I cannot ask for freedom, to be returned. It makes me sick that you are forcing me to live in the place where you rape me. I am fourteen when I deliver my first baby. I am scared to have this baby in a trailer instead of a hospital. Angel is beautiful and the only blessing from this nightmare. She keeps me company and I would do anything to protect her. I wonder if my mother feels the same way
about me. Does she remember me?
It has been so long since I’ve seen
her. Is she looking for me? When
I am seventeen he says that God
has cured him of his sexual problem
and he will never touch me again.
I want to believe him. I want it all
to stop. I have this full feeling in
my belly and I know that I am
pregnant again. I am allowed outside
after Starlite is born. My girls and
I enjoy walking outside to pet the cats.
They remind me of home. I miss my
cat, Monkey that my step-father
brought home when I was young.
I am still alive. There is still hope.
I must survive and endure. I must
protect my daughters. I see the moon
and the moon sees me. Looking up at
the full moon, I know my mom is
looking at the same moon. I will see
her again one day. I hope she accepts
me and my family.

Kristin Duke

Mixed Media

Measures approx. 16" high x 12" wide x 14" deep. 

Kasha Fahy

Mixed Media on canvas

24" x 18"

Nicole Zaunbrecher, Poet

Artists - Diane Zeise 




Et tu, Brute?
Ides of March, 44 B.C. Account from the journal of a Roman Patrician

Today my Rome was shattered.
The murmuring streets grew to a clamor,
Apollo glinted off knives diving into
Julius Caesar’s heart.

In their fervor blood flew,
splattering the walls,
painting their faces. Eyes
rolled back into their heads, froth
brimming at their mouths. They
slashed wildly, blindly, until their
blood mixed with Caesar’s.

Their hearts and words were steady,
so none would know their secret intent,
so well was it hidden in their hearts.
How nervous they must have been,
screaming inside their minds;
bloodlust raging, hands shaking.
Yet their hands were steady and words smooth like oil.

“The Liberators”—though conspirators all, avengers of Pompey—
see the cowards scatter through crowds, blood dripping from palms,
a red trail to follow the traitors. They flee knowing their honor has been forsaken:
betrayed their country and familias, not just three times, but five-and-thirty.
Not for silver pieces, but for their greed of the Res Publica.

I well remember Lucretia, and no kings are welcome here,
yet is life the price for victory and rightful prize to rule?
Was it worth never again being welcomed back into Rome’s arms?
And you, Brutus? Were you not leader, converter of them all?
Did you not sway him to come out despite his suspicions, bad omens from visions and divination,
by saying “Make your own courage your favorable omen”?

Did not Caesar’s eyes cry “Kai su, teknon?”


*Et tu, Brute?: Latin for “And you, Brutus?” portrayed in Shakespeare’s play as Julius Caesar’s last words.
*Familias: Roman extended family or household controlled by the paterfamilias (Head Male).
*Kai su, teknon?: Greek for “You too, child?” some say this phrase was Caesar’s last, or that he said nothing.
*Res Publica: Republic of Rome

Diane Zeise

Veronica Spake, Poet

Artists - Stephanie Marotta


My poem is inspired by the Austrian-born French tailor Franz Reichelt. Reichelt was among a group of “birdmen” who invented parachute-suits designed to enable men to essentially fly. Reichelt secured permission from the French police to test his invention with dummies from the Eiffel Tower in 1912. However, Reichelt surprised friends and onlookers by putting on the suit himself. Though the crowd tried to dissuade him, Reichelt had full confidence in his design and could not be deterred. He jumped, the parachute failed to deploy, and Reichelt’s experiment resulted in his accidental death. Footage of the event can be found on YouTube.


The Flying Tailor’s Pantoum
Franz Reichelt’s fatal Eiffel Tower jump, February 1912

Sixty meters separates the living from the end.
The last of the birdmen prepares for flight,
feet perched on the tower’s rail,
arms spread wide like Icarus.

The last of the birdmen prepares for flight.
The cold air betrays his quick breaths.
Arms spread wide like Icarus,
under the sun, across the Seine.

The cold air betrays his quick breaths.
He bids his friends à bientôt.
Under the sun, across the Seine,
cloaked in twenty pounds of silken wings.

He bids his friends à bientôt.
The rigid ground eager to rip at the seam.
Cloaked in twenty pounds of silken wings
he stares long into the crowd below.

The rigid ground eager to rip at the seam.
A sacrificial page gives flight to his dream.
He stares long into the crowd below.
There is no grand dive, no swift leap.

A sacrificial page gives flight to his dream.
He empties his lungs, steps off, and sinks.
There is no grand dive, no swift leap.
Five seconds separates the living from the end.

Stephanie Marotta

Mixed Media

Measures approx. 3' and base approx. 12" square.  

Lois Goh, Poet

Artists - Genavieve Charette and Kirsten Glowacki


Singapore officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, 137 kilometres (85 mi) north of the equator. The country has the world's third highest GDP PPP per capita of US$59,936, making Singapore one of the world's wealthiest countries.

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Malaya culminating in the Battle of Singapore. The Japanese occupied Singapore until the British repossessed it in September 1945 after the Japanese surrender.

During the Japanese Occupation, the Chinese people living in Singapore were tortured very badly, one war heroine was Elizabeth Choy who lived through the Japanese Occupation and never revealed any names even though she was being tortured.



I Look Into The Mirror

永不放弃 (yǒng bù fàng qì)
Removing my hairclip from my thinning black hair
Hair that the kempeitai had used to drag me around the cell.
My body going over the metal nails and nettles left behind by
the other Japanese soldiers. My skin so bloody and raw.

天无绝人之路 (tiān wú jué rén zhī lù)
Unhooking my pearl earrings from my Buddha earlobes
Earlobes that the monsters had wires attached to, the electricity
coursing through my body, death standing innocently by my side.
The electricity making my body contort as my husband watched.

自助者天助 (Zì zhù zhě tiān zhù)
Unzipping and stepping out of my incandescent blue qipao
Qipao, ripped and wet from the daily water exercises. They pumped
me with litres of water until my belly grew big then they bashed my
belly in with the butts of their bayonets. Over and over. And over.

死马当活马医 (si ma dang huo ma yi)
Peeling off my embroidered chinese bib and silk panties
Panties that smell and are stained. The pain had been too much for
me to bear. Defecation. Involuntary urination. The smell rises in the
cell and flirts with the other stenches. I cannot take it. Regurgitation.


I have broken out of no. 4, I have escaped death.
I will pose nude today for sculptress, Dora Gordine.
I am Elizabeth Choy and one must not be prudish.

Kirsten Glowacki

Mixed Media

Measures approx. 16" high, 12" wide and 10" deep.

Genavieve Charette

Mixed Media

Statement: Each object was broken into small pieces and glued back together.  A pearl rests inside each object and the viewer is able to peer inside an unpatched hole.  Inside the first object the pearl rests on tangled wire, the second object has a pearl floating in water and the third contains a pearl resting on a nails.  A link to Genavieve's blog showing her notes and process coming soon.  Here is a peek at the notes.

Jenni Sujka, Poet

Artist - Kelsey Schirard




This poem is about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. There were seven total assasins of different ages placed in different intervals throughout a parade that the duke was attending is Sarajevo, Bosnia. Each assassin was part of a cyanide suicide pact when the deed was done. However, the cyanide was not mixed right. They were all arrested and tried.



The Assassins’ Story

One:

Mehmedbasic is doing this for a greater place in the sun for Serbia, bomb in hand,
police in the way, leave it to the second to cause a racket.
Proud, this will not be my last.
Target: second car

Two:

I, Cabrinovic, arm arching back to launch at the Duke,
car accelerated, bomb, deflected.
Swallow cyanide and into the Miljacka.
What have we done?


Three:

Myself, Vaso, 17 years when the Black Hand touched me,
myself, failed to do its bidding.
Nothing to do but turn my life around.


Four:

Recruited by brother familiars
bomb, pistol, unused cynide.
Popovic, hid my weapons.
Found and released.

Five:

Lived on the fringes of terrorism,
later hung on those fringes
though unarmed and nervous
I, Ilic, could not keep the secret.

Six:

Motorcar to the hospital simply by chance,
Grabez, should have set an example for the five young ones,
all tied by a disease, Tuberculosis.


Death:

Wrong turn into myself, Pricip, successful in more than one-way, 14th anniversary
Two compressions to cause millions more,
The hunter has become the hunted,
“It is nothing, it is nothing, it is nothing.”

Kelsey Schirard

Thomas McCloghry, Poet.

Artists - Taylor Adkins and Ali Kasper




Nero killed his own mother to gain political power. The poem is a synthesis of that event, and a confession of the author regarding his own mother.

Matricide

I was something else when I was young. I hated
you, thought the only way to get rid of you would
be to have a blood transfusion and funnel you

away from me. That’s how much I hated you.
I would have thrown myself from the
highest bridge I could find, my body like a

Monet coming apart, the image
saturated by the sun. There was a
calling I would have wanted to answer. I

felt so much shame then, I swore that I could
hurt God, see him throw the daylight over his
shoulder like a sack, as if regretting how and what

men are taught. Even the camellia sears white
from nuclear winter. This is the truth
the dead know—that elegance is absolute,

that I could be lying. Psychosis wracks the
ghost body, the vessel used in dream. What can I
say to defend myself? That when I rise

every day, I feel like the Vitruvian Man? That I hunker down,
restrained like the wrecked seraphim of my youth,
wild and gnashing, wild and gnashing.

Over time, the wings train themselves to unfurl, the
heartbeat slows to a crawl, and the head of the
beast lies heavy in the palms of the one ready to tell it

beautiful lies before it is put down. Even the
brute must know tenderness before it
dies. Somewhere, your hands caress

my neck, and for a moment—everything
is as it should be. The Romans had a
name for this in Latin—mater. Being a

mother means doing terrible things. Trust me, I know.
So does being a son. And I now know the only
elegant way to die is to be beaten, and beaten, and

beaten into pigment, like Nero attacking his
mother with bloodshot eyes, regal with every
bash, focused on the early pleasure of her

milk, something unforgivable calling him
to do this, the worn caliga on his foot

drenched, somehow, in the only thing we know.

Ali Kasper

Taylor Adkins

Mixed media

Measures approx. 14" tall 

Cindy Harre, Poet

Artist - Marc Berenguer 


On December 21st, 1980, at 11 am, a group of students at Moscow State University gathered on the school’s parade grounds to honor the death of John Lennon. The event was quickly broken up by the KGB.

In the middle of a cloud I call your name

we are all adventurers, still
and although my blood flows from farmers
who tilled the land so beautifully
these hundreds of years
my ideas spin out dizzily on this esplanade
of Moscow State

he died so quickly, shot
by ideas and thoughts of hypocrisy
but that really hardly matters
I just can’t feel that it matters
because his words were stars
across the universe, within us
and without us
he imagined us as we would be
in our best form of ourselves
and all we want is to be that

that reality swarms in
wasps into us and divides us
sends us running back to rooms
libraries and classes
is of little consequence
because we had the moment
to recognize that we know who he is
and that he never made anything
but dreamed things he did
and so much better than they are

so another Sunday curls away
only a little different, only
a little more afraid
but we have marked it in the red
of our proud country, and we will
remember it in our hearts
alongside the shining moments
of our childhoods when we sat
on shoulders for parades
saw the red and gold flags

and fancied our union to be
full of such brave explorers

Marc Berenguer