The Faculty of the Department of Art and Art History of Florida International University is pleased to be exhibiting recent work on the second floor of the Green Library, University Park. The work of fifteen members of the department includes painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video art, books, articles, quilts, internet art, glass and wood constructions, graphics, videos of installations, and more.

The exhibition honors the National Association of Schools of Art and Design Accreditation Team (NASAD) who will be on campus the week of November the 5th. To welcome the team a number of art activities are planned on both campuses. See Art Dept.

Tori Arpad, Pip Brant, Bill Burke, James Couper, Carol Damian, Richard Duncan, Mirta Gomez & Eduardo Del Valle, Clive King, Kate Kretz, Bill Maguire, Juan Martinez, Alan Sondheim.

"From the catacombs" comes from a series of drawings called 'Pilgrimages', actual and metaphysical journeys from the common base of Miami to specific locations. They are designed to be exhibited in a narrative sequence so the spectator can experience the effect of the progressive change. In that sense , they have the interactive feeling of an installation.

To date two journeys have been completed. The introductory journey was from Miami to Horseshoe Canyon, Utah and the second was to the Museum of Modern Art in Wales.

I am at present working on the third, which covers the length to the Eastern Seaboard to Newfoundland. Other planned pilgrimages include the 'diagonal' to Anchorage, Alaska and South to Patagonia.

"Memory Stain" comes from a recent development of paintings which I am working on alongside the drawings called "The Naranja scrolls." I recently moved to a farmland area of great fertility and I am using this condition to resurrect a series of my older drawings which are badly flooded damaged. I have begun to reconstruct and rework them placing them on boards of etched drawings with represent this location. These board give the foundation of a creative 'seed bed'. "Spring Ghosts" is a color study for the series.

Tori Arpad
My work explores the fluid, ephemeral nature of memory, its relationships with history, the environment and our understanding of identity. I incorporate objects, images and text into sculpture and multi-media installations, choosing diverse materials for their capacity to address conceptual concerns and reveal the traces of physical actions, the patterns of thought and residue of processes.
The following statements discuss several recent projects:

m n e m o n i c d e v i c e s (multi-media installation) 2001
The identities of four generations of women is the basis for this project, incorporating film of repetitive hand activities, home movies and cast clay indices whose texts are creations of cord and yarn by fingers both delicate and capable. The filmed images are overtly female and often feminine. In a suburban home, my grandmother's nostalgic spinning and rag rugs provide a material connection to a past of her own creation. Similarly my mother's lipstick glamour and young niece's princesses mark them as both feminine and active creators of their own identities. Home movies, at once document and fiction, record roles enacted, revealing potential limitations and sources of uniquely female strength. Memory appears in different guises as subjective revision and embellishment assert their color. "mnemonic devices" explores our truths and fictions, woven into perceptions and difficult to unravel.

Project Description:
In this multi-media installation a 27-minute video loop incorporating black and white Super 8 film and color 8 mm family home movies is projected among a grouping of drawings and photographs in the style of a family photo wall. There are 18 drawings, 9 series of photo prints from digitally-captured video stills, a handmade book with digital prints and a child's chair with a drawing on its seat. This grouping centers around a 8-foot diameter hand-crocheted rug, made of clothing discarded by the artist's family members, which is connected by crocheted cloth strands to a cast photo album. The installation size varies based upon the space in which it is installed.