In The Frame: Artists In Their Own Words
Share with others:
"A lot of my work is done out of the country. [With the Sampsonia project,] I'm looking very closely at my home."
In the Frame is an occasional Post-Gazette video series on artists and the arts scene in Pittsburgh.
The work: Meticulous is perhaps the word that best describes Ms. Samuels' artwork and process, the latter being integral to the finished product. We filmed her in her studio working on a phase of her ongoing Sampsonia Way project, an examination of the lane she has lived on since 1980 in Pittsburgh's North Side Mexican War Streets neighborhood. Prior to a 2005-06 exhibition at the Mattress Factory, Ms. Samuels photographed the 828-foot long street in 16-inch by 24-inch sections. These were combined in a 30-foot-long Iris print that was embellished with hand-written or engraved comments told by street residents and passers-by. "Mapping Sampsonia Way" traveled to New York, and Ms. Samuels has continued to explore her lane, making casts of potholes, interviewing residents, collecting and pressing plant life and creating exacting large drawings derived from photographs of portions of the lane that represent, if not exactly reproduce, each stone and crack. Ms. Samuels listens to audio books during the long hours her painstaking work requires, and the story of Homer's journey home in "The Odyssey" inspired her current project component. She is handwriting the entire book over a scroll-like overlay of the street. "It starts at the Monterey Street side of Sampsonia. Odysseus will return, hopefully, by the time I reach the end."
The artist: A native New Yorker, Ms. Samuels grew up in New Orleans. She moved to Pittsburgh to attend Carnegie Mellon University, where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees. She also holds a diploma from the Institute in Arts Administration at Harvard University. Ms. Samuels was awarded a Ph.D. by Seton Hill University, in 2007. She and her husband Henry Reese co-founded City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, part of an international network that provides sanctuary to exiled writers. She was Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Artist of the Year in 2003, named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania in 2007, and her "Luminous Manuscript" is among 38 entries in Judith Dupre's book "Monuments: America's History in Art and Memory," along with the Statue of Liberty and The Alamo. "Luminous Manuscript," permanently installed at the Center for Jewish History, NYC, measures 22-by-20 feet and comprises thousands of individually formed units. Ms. Samuels won an international competition for a permanent site-specific work for Brown University, which she completed in 2006. She created "The Alphabet Garden," a commissioned memorial, in Grafeneck, Germany, at the site of the 1940 "euthanasia experiments." Ms. Samuels has been given solo exhibitions by Carnegie Museum of Art, Mattress Factory, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, and is represented by Kim Foster Gallery, New York. She has exhibited in France, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia as well. She serves on the boards of City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, the Mattress Factory, and the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University.
First Published July 28, 2010 12:00 am
