ood-ymph-cellulose goes to Golisano Children's Hospital. Here are a few pictures of the installation and some of our young contributors:

Charles Burchfield's Painting the Sphynx. He captures the energy of life.

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

Secret Cervix

I made a collage with Jesus's heart cut out and gave him a replacement cervix. Late at night, when Dave saw it he couldn't help making the awful pun, Jesus and his secret cervix. I've sent this off for MarionWilson to consider for a show titled Toxic Pink. That, and a pie server that's been woven through with this pink silk ribbon.

I'm still trying to sort out the transitional objects and phenomenon concepts from DW Winicott. It may take me the rest of my life. So what, right? At any rate, I'm playing with a new lens that I got at M and Q camera. Joe McCarthy's a great teacher about photography and also very good at negotiating personal space. I think he should teach  medical students how to interact with patients, the way the Tappet brother's can teach them how to take a good history. Cars, Cameras, People--it's about interactions and exchange.

The stuff in my black bag. This is what I found in my little blag bag, the big one--never mind that one.  Two picture Ids one of a friend and her money, one mine. I was holding it on graduation. I won't tell you where she put her car keys because she asked me not to. Paper, lots of little pieces of paper that I carry compulsively while I am trying to use my time efficiently to make Kasutama.  Back up battery for my point and shoot camera. Video recorder. Spare cell phone. Twenty dollars. Milton Rogovin post card. Ipod, flashcards with contact informatioin on friends and conservationist with book guillotine to cut paper from books. pen and drawing pencil. Model for origami rocket, first of a thousand I plan to make next year. And a little pocket change. I think that's all other than a little dust. This is not a survival kit for a desert island, but it represents a good bit of what makes my life worth living: art, music and friends.

The branch and book project evolving. This project will be getting installed at the SUNY Upstate Medical Library this week. The project has been a collaboration between myself and three other artists. I've been organizing the collaboration and actively working on it. Most of the work represented here is mine with a few exception of folded books that were made by my two of my neighbors. Stay tuned for more details as the project goes up. The branches are a bit slippery and getting them to stay in place will be the biggest challenge other than just getting the branches over there and into the library.

New Orleans Photos: I fell in love with this curtain.

I took the kids to Saratoga to See the Fred Tomaselli show. They climbed some trees in full bloom afterwards. Then we went up to the Adks where Dave harvested and I peeled some hemlocks for the upcoming project with Mark. There were some great clouds rolling over the mountains.

Pictures from Chicago and Iowa

I had a great time in the midwest. I met Lindsay Obermeyer and also reconnected with some of the art faculty in Iowa. I'm not sure I'll have time to complete the MFA I started so long ago, but I'd sure like to.

I just had a great week in Iowa where I reconnected with my former faculty at the University of Iowa Dept of Art and Art History, including David Dunlap and Laurel Ferrin, among others. I sat in on a drawing and painting critique and also went to the annual Arts Fest, where I met Robert Glasgow and met some of his graduate students.

I'm hoping to complete the MFA I started over ten years ago. There will be some logistical issues for sure but the fact that my program director at the UIHC is supportive of this makes them seems surmountable by comparison. The support just floors me--in a good way. I am still breathing. No need to put those ACLS skills to work just yet. Save that for when I actually have the MD and the MFA.

Also I learned about artist Daniel Hayman from novelist Nick Flynn, one of the authors at the conference who is doing incredible work on issues of torture. He's promised some guidance organizing collaborations with artists and writers. Daniel Hayman links to the Philigrafika blog, a show I saw this Spring when I was in Philadelphia taking the second part of my national boards.

Sometimes you just have to dream big. Here is one of my recently altered prints. It's a small monoprint that has little slits cut into it so the light bleeds through. The squiggly line is actually the shadow of the yarn that is woven into the print. I love that the cuts, the light coming through them, and the shadow cast by the thread pulled intermittently to fill them each makes a different expressive mark.

Julia Barello is an artist I came across while looking up an old drawing professor from Las Cruces, Jacklyn ST Aubyn, who makes paintings of dolls. Barello makes beautiful installations from old x-ray and MRI films. I could see making something like this given the materials. I'll have to see what I can get from the radiology dept in Iowa once I get there.

New doll photos from this week.

Working on images with wounds using silk yarns and knitting ribbons. The operating metaphor is still healing. I have been sorting through books for good images to work with and even using some of my old drawings and prints as backdrops. Here are pictures of the flat images.