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(10/26/19 6:06pm)
Katina Bitsicas is the current visiting artist at Plunkett Gallery. Bitsicas’ exhibit, entitled “Revive,” explores themes centered around coming back to life even with death edging close. She uses the motif of red thread, commonly associated with human connection, to symbolize loss and longing in her multimedia exhibit.
Bitsicas is a new media artist, a genre that utilizes modern technologies to create artwork. She personally specializes in photography, performance and video, and her artwork has been shown around the world. Currently, Bitsicas is the University of Missouri’s Program Director and Assistant Professor of Digital Storytelling.
Her pieces commonly ponder the effects of trauma, often relating her personal experiences in order to bring widespread societal issues to an intensely human level.
“Revive” is unique in that it not only contains Bitsicas’ traumatic experiences with hospitals due to her father’s struggle with Stage Four Mantle Cell Lymphoma, but relates it to Luci Cook’s transplant-related post-traumatic stress disorder after receiving three heart transplants. Through conveying their shared experiences in art, Bitsicas visually demonstrates the innate need for connection among people.
Her exhibit also clearly illustrates the loneliness and loss felt by people in hospitals.
“Conversation about the trauma and PTSD involved with transplants is seen as taboo,” Bitsicas wrote in her artist’s statement.
Bitsicas’ artwork fights against this taboo to open up a conversation about the trauma of medical issues and procedures. The gallery is almost overwhelmed with grief. In one corner, a series of cloth panels traces a line from Bitsicas’ house to her father’s, a journey she was unable to take when he was diagnosed with cancer. On one wall hangs a triple sequence of embroideries, each uniquely related to Bitsicas’ father’s journey with cancer and on another, several bleak hospital masks hang and spit out red threads.
However, Bitsicas’ pieces also speak to hope. In a previous performance involving the emotionless hospital masks, Cook removed their masks and kissed them on the forehead, “reclaiming the traumatizing medical experiences as well as forming a personal connection” with the physicians who treated but rarely spoke to her.
Three videos are projected onto one of the gallery’s walls, representing the three different hearts Cook has received, and feature Cook beautifully describing the location and feel of each. The third embroidered piece in the aforementioned sequence represents Bitsicas’ coping mechanism.
“Revive” demonstrates Bitsicas’ adeptness in weaving together form and content and trauma and recovery. Her exhibit is breathtaking and forces viewers to consider more deeply their connection to others, particularly to those who have experienced trauma.
Bitsicas’ exhibit will be available to visit at Plunkett Gallery in Hardeman Hall until Oct. 31.
(09/27/19 5:41pm)
Mercer sophomore Faith Reagin said her love for art began when she was three years old.
“I loved coloring books. I loved anything that had to do with that,” Reagin said. “I’ve always been a creative person, and I’ve always liked doodling things.”
Now, as a college student, Reagin is a passionate participant in Mercer’s art program. Mercer offers two avenues for its art students to pursue: the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Fine Arts. Reagin is on the B.F.A. track.
Choosing Mercer was easy for Reagin. She said she appreciates the intimate, small school atmosphere, particularly in the art department.
“When it’s such a small group of people, your opinion and your views and the way that you do things matters so much more,” she said. “You’re more of a person that way. I feel like that’s really important when you’re trying to be an artist.”
Reagin has a special love for film photography after taking a film class in high school and learning about the darkroom process. She also enjoys painting, but her primary artistic interest lies in drawing.
Reagin’s love for drawing shines through the pages of her sketchbook. One of her favorite early works is an oil pastel piece featuring a skeleton being consumed by kudzu.
“The kudzu is an invasive species, and it just sucks the life out of anything, so I was thinking it can suck the life out of a human. That’s funny! It’s probably the best thing I did in high school,” Reagin said.
Reagin is also proud of a surrealist drawing she made in high school, inspired by Hokusai’s iconic woodblock print, “The Wave.” This piece is heavy with symbolism.
“The peach is truth, the lightning is awakening from ignorance, the blood is humanity and the time is mortality,” she said.
For Reagin, art is an exploratory tool to learn about other cultures and history. Each of her pieces is laden with research and meaning.
A more recent drawing of hers is made entirely out of hatching. In the center is a carefully shaded Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam, singing emotionally into a microphone. Surrounding him is a background of tiles filled with the titles of different songs Reagin thought he might be singing, including “Black,” “Elderly Woman” and “Nothingman.”
Reagin’s content changes along with her medium. While she tends to focus on people in her drawings, she likes to explore the effects of lighting on her camera.
“One of my favorite things ever is when you can see the sunlight coming through the leaves and you can see all the veins in them and the shadows that overlap,” She said. “I love it. It’s such a pretty effect.”
In the future, she dreams of owning her own gallery and selling her art for a living.
For Reagin — a photographer, painter and sketch artist — art is “expression. It’s the way someone relates to the world around them. It’s a way to filter yourself visually.”
“Who am I?” Reagin said. “I am my own art.”