The Inova Open House for Gallery Day last Saturday provided a unique opportunity to experience a variety of art forms supported by UW-Milwaukee's Peck School of the Arts. On the third floor of their building on Prospect that houses the Inova/Kenilworth gallery Leah Schreiber worked in her studio. After obtaining a BFA from Illinois State University Schreiber decided to pursue a three-year MFA degree in painting at UWM beginning in 2007. This weekend she's working on archives for her April MFA exhibit when she'll complete her degree. But in the coming "Crossover" exhibition opening this weekend at the UWM Union Art Gallery, Schreiber will be presenting a new direction in her art that has now renewed her efforts. Schreiber explains this exciting inspiration in her career before the exhibition opens.
Q: What is this new direction in your work?
A: My new work is based on an image I found of hair cells in the inner ear. These tiny hairs actually give us our equilibrium. So my new pencil drawings that I'm working on become diagrammatic and while referencing actual physical balance, they also reflect the balance needed to maintain life in general.
Q: And your drawings reflect this?
A: These drawings are the research for this one image on the hairs in the inner ear. This also reflects on what are the tools that we use to record our thoughts. The pencil drawings represent something that is temporary, easily erased and less committed than an actual painting.
Q: This will influence into your MFA show slated for April?
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A: Yes, I hope to create a whole body of work that visually relates to balance. Physical balance and balancing our lives. So now I'm collecting images that remind my of the forms based on the inner ear hair I talked about. I'm also collecting materials from salvage yards [that remind me of these forms] to use for installations. This is all working towards my MFA show in spring.
Q: What are you exhibiting in UWM's Crossover that opens on Friday?
A: These images are based on histology, what's inside the body. The pieces come from my recent show, "Viscera: A Specious Compendium" that was influenced by the loss of a friend who died of cervical cancer. She was diagnosed at 29 and because they waited and she couldn't get into to see a doctor for a while, her cancer had progressed too far. They couldn't do anything for her. She was engaged to be married, but she died within six months.
Q: And so the images in the Crossover show reflect this?
A: Yes, I am taking the diagrams, the images with reference to the inner body. They're Xerox transfers and ink, using matte medium, applied to a specific plastic rectangular block. My piece for the "Crossover" show is Medium Cellular Attraction II. These blocks are on exhibit in a box on top of a pedestal I built, similar to a museum display. I'm using the idea of medical research and knowledge along with the social pressures that affect the inside of the body, like illness
and stress, that we don't often think about as we do about the outside of the body. Medicine and science, as in the case of my friend, can't solve everything or gives us all the answers.
(View Leah Schreiber's art on www.leahschreiber.com or at the Racine Art Site at the corner of State and Main in downtown Racine. The UWM Union Art Gallery exhibition "Crossover" opens October 23 and also features Schreiber.)
