This past Thursday, I visited Joyce Cutler-Shaw’s exhibit
entitled “What Comes to Mind” in UCLA’s ART|SCI Gallery. In the dimly lit room packed to capacity with
UCLA students, I found it difficult to immerse myself in the art due to the distractions
of my surroundings. After a few minutes,
I began to look at some of the work displayed and immediately became enthralled.
Picture of me next to photographs of skeletons framed inside images of a brain scan.
A series of photographs on the northern wall of the exhibit
depicted different locales in New York’s Upper West Side. The descriptions that accompanied the
pictures explained the artist’s relationship with her mother and hometown, and
how the locations in the photographs were significant to the memory of her
mother. The photographs were framed
inside the image of a woman’s face, adding further to the collection's theme of
the mind and memory. It is interesting
to note that acknowledgement of her mother’s death as a passage led Cutler-Shaw
to the laboratories at UCSD School of Medicine, to study the natural phenomena
of death and life.
Example of the frame with image of woman’s face from the
exhibit.
About fifteen minutes into the exhibition opening, Cutler-Shaw was asked
to say a few words about her work as Artist in Residence at UCSD’s School of
Medicine. She mentioned that 4 unique
experiences with death (one of which was her mother’s), led her to approach the
dean of the medical school to spend time drawing cadavers. Cutler-Shaw believed it was very important to
have respect for the cadaver she drew, and her mentality was that it was not
about her, but rather it was about the cadaver.
After her talk, I spent a little more time exploring the
exhibit, this time focusing on her work with anatomy. I was very interested in her drawings of
skeletons, limbs, and other body parts.
One drawing of a skeleton and its shadow really brought the idea of a
skeleton to life. Although we often
think of skeletons as what lies under our bones, we don’t often see one in
person because it lies under our skin.
However, Cutler-Shaw made it clear that a skeleton is very real and it
too casts a shadow.
One of Culter-Shaw’s drawings of a skeleton and its shadow.
The exhibit as a whole put the studies of memory and anatomy
in a different light. Memory represents
things that were, and anatomy represents things that are.
