MEDIA CONTACT: Sharon Dickman (585) 275-4128

August 13, 2003

EVENT: "Black and White and Shades of Gray," an installation by studio arts major Sara Missell

TIME, DATE, AND PLACE: Now through Sunday, Aug. 31, in the sidewalk window of the Sibley Centre, 228 E. Main St. (facing the corner of Franklin Street and the Liberty Pole downtown)

ADMISSION: Free and open to the public

For Sara Missell's first piece of public art, she created a wall of words. She broke up the stanzas of T. S. Eliot's famous poem, "The Hollow Men," and placed selected words on clear vinyl and the wall behind it in a storefront installation now on display in downtown Rochester.

"It was the climax of the war in Iraq when I developed the idea last spring," says Missell, a senior at the University of Rochester. "I wanted to create a piece about the war, but not make it about the war. I wanted it to be more universal." The installation is being shown through Sunday, Aug. 31, in the window of the Sibley Centre, 228 E. Main St., facing the corner of Franklin Street and the Liberty Pole downtown.

In "Black and White and Shades of Gray," Missell was inspired by Eliot's poem--one of her favorites--and wanted viewers to contemplate his images about death and desolation. The poem ends:
      "For Thine is the Kingdom
      For Thine is
      Life is
      For Thine is the
      This is the way the world ends
      This is the way the world ends
      This is the way the world ends
      Not with a bang but a whimper."

"When I do art, it's always about the emotions I'm feeling," says Missell, who is majoring in studio arts and psychology. A resident of Brockport, she is working this summer as art director of a Girl Scout camp in Albany and plans to teach art after graduation. The Sibley Center is a satellite space operated by The Rochester Contemporary (RoCo), the city's only nonprofit arts center.