click to enlarge - Courtesy
- Installation view of "About Face: Votives and Video"
Politics and religion, it's said, are not subjects for polite conversation. That makes them perfect subjects for Susan Calza, whose work few critics would ever call "polite." The Vermont artist is known for her brash, bold, wrenching takes on the issues of the moment: mass shootings, the climate crisis, homelessness, COVID-19. She employs a lot of red.
Calza opened her eponymous Montpelier gallery five years ago with an intent to focus on the political. Last year, she spent six months documenting mass shootings in the U.S., recording more than 600 of them with a digital counter and an installation of red ribbons suspended from the ceiling. (The counter is still in the gallery: 157 mass shootings so far in 2024.) The artist succeeded in bringing attention to the issue, but at a heavy emotional toll. Following that series of installations, which included collaborations with other local artists, she needed to make something quieter, more intimate and personal.
"About Face: Votives and Video" takes that turn. Calza connects more closely with her own vulnerability, and the work possesses complexity and depth.
As a visitor enters the gallery, the warm scent of 71 votive candles (Calza is 71) and dim lighting conjure a church-like atmosphere. "Our Hour," an eight-minute looping video installation, includes shots of Sainte-Chapelle — an extraordinary, jewellike 13th-century chapel in Paris.
Calza's video and votive installation are separate pieces but collectively lend the show a religious sensibility while avoiding religion's baggage.
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The votives, grouped on surfaces around the small gallery, don't present familiar images of saints. Instead, Calza wrapped each in a white sheet of onionskin paper with a drawing of a face on it. Each has a different caption: "For the ones who carry us." "For we who look away." "For us who cross borders." "For our mothers who did their best."
Some of the captions are explicitly political, such as "For Alexei [Navalny]." Others are more personal: "For our vague morning dread" refers to a phrase Calza attributed to a former student, whose face the artist sees in the drawing.
All the faces are drawn loosely, some almost grotesquely, but with a tender, deliberate line — they're more like portraits than sketches. Calza said she uses her left (nondominant) hand to draw, as it forces her to be less precious. Some of the faces are adorned with earrings. Many have teeth. All of them look a bit alien, but each one is expressive. Though not distinct enough to be individual people, the faces do convey different personalities.
Calza began her votive project with a single candle, asking, "What am I trying to connect with in myself?" When she found a box of onionskin paper, the drawings kept flowing, almost obsessively. Calza said she felt an ease and directness that don't always come from working on a larger sculpture or video project.
"Our Hour," on the other hand, is addressed not only to herself but to us — the viewers. "We have this hour," the narrator says calmly, "which is a short hour." The video describes searching for and stumbling upon beauty; in addition to Sainte-Chapelle, the images include crows, a beach, city lights, an excavator. Calza said she shot the footage on different trips, as well as during an artist residency in Wales.
The video suggests snippets of memory rather than a story. It's like a book of hours with images instead of prayers, and each is associated with a short passage of time. "Our Hour" places the viewer exactly where they are, reflecting on the present.
Calza's video and votives don't take on religion, advocate for it or expose its flaws. But they do use some of its shorthand to ask the question that runs through her current work: "How do people get through?"