Contributing Artists Lecture at Fairfield University Art Museum

This spring, the Fairfield University Art Museum hosted a special series of gallery talks, featuring artists whose work is on view in the semiquincentennial exhibition, For Which It Stands…

In the Walsh Gallery at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, community members gathered to hear directly from esteemed artists on their craft, inspiration, and how they created the works currently on view in the exhibition.

Immigrant Stories

On March 5, Sara Rahbar and Maria de Los Angeles reflected on their experiences coming to America—Rahbar from Iran, and de Los Angeles from Mexico—and how that journey has been represented in their artwork. Rahbar’s I don’t trust you anymore, Flag #59 uses military and religious iconography against an American flag and wrestles with patriotism, politics, and her own biography. The large-scale textile sculpture by de Los Angeles, Freedom is Not Free?, incorporates the small American flag that she received at her citizenship ceremony.

Local Artists

On April 14, local artists Richard Klein and James Prosek delved into their own experiences perceiving the flag, and how that impacted their artwork featured in For Which It Stands…

Klein’s Transparency is made from eyeglasses, ashtrays, glass jars, and brass. “I didn’t want it to scream flag right away,” he said. “Just like discovering that these are eyeglass lenses and ashtrays, I wanted the viewer to come to the realization at a certain point: Oh, this is a flag. That realization then prompts viewers to ask, ‘Well, what does this mean?’”

Prosek’s Invisible Boundaries is an acrylic on panel piece that depicts an American Flag with the stars replaced by a single bald eagle and a ring of animals through the canton and stripes. He shared, “Throughout my career, the most common thread that’s carried through is the idea that humans draw lines in the landscape.” Those lines are what he saw when looking at the American flag, also noticing that there was nothing organic. His resulting work featured an animal for each of the 50 states, arranged in a circle reminiscent of early flags, as well as the symbolic eagle.

A Portrait of the Present

On April 23, Imo Nse Imeh, a Massachusetts-based artist and professor of art and art history at Westfield State University, closed out the series of talks with a deep dive into his process for and i’ll be there with you, on display in the Walsh Gallery.

“It’s a portrait of where we are right now,” Imeh reflected as he stood in front of the large, mostly monochrome piece made from charcoal, India ink, and conte crayon on unstretched canvas. The only pops of color are the reds and blues of the American flag, and a yellow strip of a “Don’t Tread of Me” flag. “I don’t know how to make art outside of the questions of who we are.”

“The raw, emotional process of drawing, especially with charcoal, was part of my thinking with this piece,” he said. “It was one of the most honest pieces I made, at the time that I made it.”

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