I'm back to working on the doll series. The show I have lined up is coming right up. Today I enlisted Calvin and Isabel in taking some shots in the backyard. It changes everything when you can see people in the pictures with the dolls. It becomes less about the dolls themselves and more about how we use them. Still, dolls speak to the imagination. There's no avoiding it.

The converstion to black and white was really to better examine the exposure of the photo and the tonal range, but I ended up rather liking it without the garish blue color of Isabel's pants. Black and white though would take me down another road and I feel distracted as it is. I'll have to think about it more before doing more pictures like this.

These are some of the books that Shander Bawden and Rachel May made for the Play With Your Book exhibition, now slated to go to Bird Library and Golisano Children's Hospital. More images will be added in the next few weeks. Keep on eye out.

ood –ymph–




(Hemlock, Sycamore, and Paper)

Artist Statement

This work explores the relationship between written language used to codify nature and the usage of natural resources to imbue it. The concept of a lexis embedded into nature prior to our formulation of it impels us to reinvest in our understanding of this developmental process.

This work also grew out of the concept of mending or healing damaged structures by making something new from what might otherwise be discarded. Any fractured structure has embedded within it the potential to be joined from its fragments into something novel and complex.

Artists Biographies

Sarah Averill was born in Bangor Maine and grew up in Upstate New York. She received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, an MA from the University of Iowa, and an M.D. from SUNY Upstate in 2010.   Her photographic work is currently featured on SUNY Upstate’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities website. Her artwork has been published in the Healing Muse and exhibited at the Johnson Art Center in Vermont, the Pfeifer Theatre in Buffalo, and Miss Mary’s Art Space in Albany.

Sarah Averill can be contacted at sarah.averill@gmail.com

Mark Povinelli was born in Buffalo New York and grew up in Louisiana. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Houston and his masters’ degree from Syracuse University in 1989. He is a founding member of the art collective FAST. His artwork has been exhibited at the Barnwell Art Center, Louisiana State Exhibit Museum, University of Houston, Syracuse University, The Floating Gallery and the Gear Factory. He was an artist in residence at Syracuse University in 2006-2007 where he installed an interactive sculpture exploring the relationship between the forces of nature and the senses. He has collaborated on several large installations including a kinetic illuminated sculpture at Syracuse University, which explored the physical representation of the mathematics of electromagnetic theory. His most recent exhibit at the Craft Chemistry gallery explored image as verse in a matrix of drawings.

Mark Povinelli can be contacted at mjpovine@AOL.com