Exhibition - Mindy Weisel: Words on a Journey

Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - Sunday, October 29, 2006
The Katzen Arts Center at American University
Artists' Reception: September 9, 2006 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: AU Museum at the Katzen

Celebrate the openings of AU Museum's five fall exhibitions:
Life After Death: New Leipzig Painters from the Rubell Family Collection;
Eberhard Havekost: New Works from the Rubell Family Collection;
Hungarian Revolution, 1956;
Mindy Weisel: Words on a Journey;
Athena Tacha: Small Wonders.

Free and open to the public.

"Mindy Weisel's heritage as the only daughter of Holocaust survivors has long spurred her work as a painter, author, and lecturer (currently at the Corcoran School of Art and Design). In this exhibition, the Washington-based artist premieres works in an entirely new technique, fused glass.

Weisel, an AU alumna, began working in glass two years ago almost by accident, taking an informal class near where she makes prints. There she discovered the medium's “ability … to hold the moment, the memory, the feeling” more effectively than painting. Weisel starts each piece by writing calligraphic marks and then manipulates, improvises, stains and sometimes breaks up several pieces of the molten material to fuse and layer into a single composition.

Words on a Journey (borrowed from a poem) refers to Weisel's journey through life as well as the implied meanings within each piece. In one work, her father's concentration camp number and mother's love of the color blue fuse into a luminous, emotionally charged commentary on memory and loss. Catalog with an interview by Jack Rasmussen, AU Museum Director and Curator accompanies the exhibition."

The Katzen Arts Center at American University
Address: 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Metro: Tenleytown/AU (Red line)
Phone: 202-885-1300
Email: KatzenArtsCenter@american.edu