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.