List Gallery

Artists in Wartime: Bearing Witness/Shaping a Response

A series of events at Swarthmore College made possible by the William J. Cooper Foundation, the Department of Art, the List Gallery, and McCabe Library. This symposium and two related exhibitions explore the role of contemporary artists who focus on war, related international health issues, and other crises of politics. Confronted with an era of wars that seem incresingly global in nature, artists are engaging in research, analysis and critique of the effects of organized violence.

Daniel Heyman’s artistic accomplishment and curatorial vision are at the heart of this project. Titled Bearing Witness, Recent Work by Daniel Heyman, his List Gallery exhibition will take place March 4—April 9, 2010. The exhibition will feature a variety of prints and paintings including dozens of his etched and watercolor portraits of Iraqi victims of torture at Abu Grhaib prison. Heyman will also curate the McCabe Library exhibition titled Printmakers Go to War. Heyman’s artist’s book, a collaboration with the poet Nick Flynn, will be on display together with prints and books by Damien Cote, Eric Avery, and Michael Reed—artists who explore the lasting impact of war. Handmade artists books often spring from the intimate and empirical observations artists make through sketchbooks, which are kept to record and test new ideas. Conversely, books and manuals can codify and institutionalize social norms, including those related to the practice of war. In varying ways, the featured artists leverage both the documentary and diaristic aspects of printmaking and bookmaking in order to challenge institutionalized forms of oppression. In doing so, they reassert a space for independent, critical, and compassionate endeavors in a time of pervasive violence and suffering.

Bearing Witness, Recent Works by Daniel Heyman
List Gallery Exhibition, March 4–April 9, 2010
Artist's Lecture: Thursday, March 4, 4:30 p.m., Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema
Opening reception to follow: 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Gallery hours: Tues.—Sunday, Noon-5:00 p.m.
For the past four years, Daniel Heyman has traveled to Jordan and Turkey to meet with former detainees, paint their portraits, and record their testimony. Numerous institutions have acquired portfolios of this work including the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Yale University Art Gallery, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Princeton University Art Museum.

Printmakers go to War: Works by Daniel Heyman in collaboration with Nick Flynn, Damian Cote, Eric Avery, and Michael Reed
McCabe Library Exhibition, March 4–April 9, 2010
Reception: Saturday, March 20, Noon-1 PM
Leveraging both the documentary and diaristic aspects of printmaking and bookmaking, the featured artists critique institutionalized violence and reassert imaginative space for compassionate endeavors.

Symposium: Artists in Wartime: Bearing Witness/Shaping a Response
Saturday, March 20, 2010 9:30 am     
Lang Performing Arts Center

• Janine Mileaf, moderator, Assistant Professor of Art History, Swarthmore College
• Daniel Heyman, Artist, Visiting Associate Professor of Studio Art, Swarthmore College and at Rhode Island School of Design
• Damian Cote, Artist
• Eric Avery, Artist, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
• Laurel Reuter, Director, North Dakota Museum of Art
• Juan Manuel Echavarria, Artist

Poetry Reading by Nick Flynn
1:00 p.m.—McCabe Library Lobby
Nick Flynn, has published his works in The New Yorker, The Nation, Fence, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, and NPR's This American Life. Author of A Note Slipped Under the Door with Shirley McPhillips. his awards include "Discovery"/The Nation Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation and The Library of Congress.

Mary Phelan | The Working Process
Mary Phelan, Associate Professor at the University of the Arts, former director, for ten years, of the Book Arts/Printmaking Program and currently Coordinator of the Fine Arts, Printmaking/Book Arts undergraduate department, is known for both her prints and letterpress printing and has collaborated with many other artists to create books and various art projects. Phelan’s work bridges printmaking, letterpress and book arts, working closely with the intimate form of the book. Her work has evolved from photo collage prints to monoprints, whose evocative imagery is created through the application of atmospheric layering over images, often taken during her travels.                                                                                   

Over the years she has regularly taught workshops for organizations such as Penland, Women’s Studio Workshop, Castle Hill and the Artist/Teacher Institute. Her books have been collected nationally and internationally and can be found at the New York Public Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt.