KAMIL ANTOS
10/5-11/9, 2001
Sr. Rosaire Gallery

The "ghosting" of the materials and the images in Kamil Antos' work serve as an unlikely metaphor for "beauty"; beauty defined by Antos as a deep reverence for something--anything--that withstands deteriorating forces. Through a destructive working process, Antos recontextualizes and recreates the materials and photographic images that he starts with. Antos burns, rubs, scratches, and erases as a means of creating objects rich in surface, filled with a history embedded through process.

This process is foregrounded in Antos' work more so than whether the end result is a painting, a book, a series of prints, or an installation. Beauty, for Antos, ultimately resides within the remnants that endured the process, rather than within façade or embellishment.

Detroit-based artist Kamil Antos exhibits regularly and is an active contributor to the artist community in his area. Currently Antos is an Instructor of Printmaking at the Center for Creative Studies, where he received his BFA in 1997.

His work is often chosen for regional exhibitions, some of which include: "Sampler," Scarab Club (Detroit); "A.O.L.\Y2K," Metropolitan Center for Creative Arts (Detroit); "Art Works for Life: AIDS benefit auction," (Detroit); and "Actual Size 8.5x11," "Actual Size 4.25x5.5," and "Untitled Detroit," all at the Detroit Contemporary. Antos' work was juried into the "9th Annual International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition" at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (Taiwan), as well as "Duty Free," Artcite Inc. (Windsor, Canada). In 1997, Antos was the recipient of the Detroit Artist Market Scholarship.
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Artist's Statement--Kamil Antos

What is a beautiful act? It is a heroic act and not necessary a gentle act. Repeatedly it is an act that either stems from brutality, or is violent in and of itself. Often beauty comes at a time when something is about to expire. Subsequently, the last moments of the act and the traces left behind are immaculately beauteous. This melancholy beauty revolves around the memories; even fabricated memories of experiences imagined but never experienced. The posture of the brutalized ruins compels such a response, stirring up fascination and empathy.

Detroit is full of such ruins that once housed individuals and infinite dreams. They held lives, long since changed, now they hold their ghosts within the firestormed walls, beneath tarnished skies and scattered amidst empty lots. Yet, somehow inside all of that drab and litter, within the charred and conflagrated frames a silent beauty withstands. It withstands the indifferent violence that has reduced these homes to scars. It is as if the ghosts of these strange lives, soaked into the walls and windowpanes, were released through the heat and flames.

It is such ghosts that are revered in all their tragic beauty. Taking a little time to look beyond and into the black and mangled surfaces there it lies gentle and soft like a whisper, a heroic beauty. The type of beauty that is bestowed upon every survivor, upon each and every single one of us. Those spaces inside the darkened windows, perched within broken facades bellow to be ennobled. Thus a purpose is fulfilled with each work. An attempted facsimile not to immortalize or save anything, rather to empathize with that beauty.

With these subjective attempts evidence is formulated that after these scars are long gone their beauty will not be forgotten. It has had the power to move and stir up the soul. Out of such revere comes this work whose subject is not always directly the ruins of Detroit. Nevertheless they are there, brooding gently over and beneath the surface of each work.

-K. Antos

BILL SANDUSKY
10/5-11/9, 2001
Little Theatre Gallery

Associate Professor Bill Sandusky has been teaching at Saint Mary's College since 1981, and his latest body of work, currently on exhibition, was produced during his sabbatical leave during the 2000-2001 academic year. Originally from Bowling Green, Kentucky, Professor Sandusky received his BFA from the Herron School of Art, Indiana University in 1968, and his MFA from Tulane University (New Orleans, LA) in 1970.

Before coming to Saint Mary's College, Professor Sandusky lived and worked in Italy for seven years. At the Santa Reparata Graphic Art Centre in Florence (1973-1980), Professor Sandusky was the education director, as well as the principle printer of etchings and lithographs. In addition, he taught painting for the Saint Mary's Rome Program from 1977-1980.

Currently the Chair of the Department of Art at Saint Mary's College, Professor Sandusky's expertise runs across a wide breadth of disciplines. He has taught classes in several areas, such as painting, drawing, books arts/artist's books, etching, lithography, 2D Design, and served as the Gallery Director in a joint position with his wife, Giovanna Lenzi, from 1981-1987.

Professor Sandusky's work is regularly chosen for exhibitions nationwide, that most recently include: Dowagiac Fine Arts Festival, (Dowagiac, MI), "New This Fall (1999)" and "PHAT 50 (1997)," both at the South Bend Regional Museum of Art (South Bend, IN), and the "1994 PSI Collection Traveling Exhibition Series" (one of 37 Mid-American artists selected to participate & hosted by 15 sites throughout Indiana). In 1992,

Professor Sandusky was the recipient of a prestigious $40,000 Lilly Open Fellowship (Ely Lilly Foundation) for his continuing work in Italy on his Artist's Books project. For more information regarding the work of Professor Sandusky, visit his website: www.saintmarys.edu/~sandusky

Artist's Statement--Bill Sandusky

These paintings are reflections of some of the thoughts, activities, and preoccupations with which I occupy myself. While seemingly simple upon first glance, they hold meanings beneath the apparent surface.

They might seem comforting, or almost inviting. They might seem confrontational. They might seem ambiguous. They might be consternating. They should elicit varying responses. The images are obviously derived from photographs, but they are not photographs. They have been created out of the necessity to create something, and they are meant to elicit responses.Perhaps to reveal something previously taken for granted.

You have my permission to bring to these works any interpretation that resonates within your beings. You always enjoy that right and have that permission, but many are hesitant to accept it. The intention of these works is to get you to not only (hopefully) admire the works in their own right, but to think about your own reasons for forming opinions.

This is my role, and the role of these paintings.

The more you look the more you see.

The more you see the more you know.

-B. Sandusky

LETTERS FROM CAMP
10/5-11/9, 2001
Hammes Gallery

Letters from Camp (an exhibition blurring the boundaries between good taste and bad) pays homage to the camp sensibility through the artists and collectors who continue to spread the word of camp.

In order to provide the viewer with multiple viewpoints, the artists and collectors were chosen with regard to their unique perspectives regarding the elements that comprise camp and the idiosyncratic way in which they use camp as a conceptual tool.

Whether collected as fine art objects (the Pez dispenser as collectable, for example), or used as an element in the production of fine art (painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, printmaking, etc.), the camp sensibility questions our general assumptions regarding "good" and "bad" taste behind facades of outrageousness, artifice, and superficiality.

The camp sensibility blurs the boundaries between high and low art with hyperbolic indulgence and irony. As a result, camp becomes a hilariously subversive tool used in the analysis of society and culture.

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Growing up in the middle class suburbs of Florida, I lived amidst seemingly endless rows of houses in demure shades of "sand" and "taupe" with pristine, always-green lawns. The summer of my sixteenth birthday, I rented a copy of the John Waters film Polyester and my bored outlook regarding that too-perfect suburban ideal was cracked in half like a walnut...

Amid Waters' over the top characters (the typical suburban housewife played by the effervescent 200 lb. drag queen Divine ), his injection of pop cultural icons (1950's teen idol Tab Hunter as Divine's love interest), erratic plot lines, and unique cinematic devices (the introduction of "Odorama" ), there seemed to me to be a serious analysis of suburban life with specific regard to the culturally constructed role of the "housewife."

I'm not suggesting that the film's complexity and depth of content was obviously apparent to me at sixteen. What excited me about the film, at that time, was the potential inherent in creating a film, or a painting, or anything, utilizing popular culture (icons or objects) and ironic humor in the most outrageous and extreme way humanely possible. What excited me about the film was Waters' use of the camp sensibility.

1 "Homer Phobia," written by Ron Hauge, dir. Mike Anderson, exec. producers Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein. The Simpsons. Original air date: Feb. 16, 1997. FOX Television.

2 On his April 2, 1997 television appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, John Waters preferred to regard Divine as, "a very gifted character actor who specialized in playing insane women."

3 Odorama-- the admission price for the film Polyester included the revolutionary scratch and sniff Odorama card; smells on the card corresponded to smells in the film.