Exquisite corpse exhibit opens in Arbor Building
Lauren Kussro, assistant professor of art and design, invites the UHCL community to an exquisite corpse exhibit between the Arbor Central and Arbor North buildings beginning Thursday, Nov. 5 through the end of the semester. This exhibit will include different monsters created by the students of her advanced printmaking class, who are co-hosting the event with Kussro.
“We’re going to mix and match and we’ll have probably five or six of them [monsters] down across the windows,” Kussro said.
The exquisite corpse game was popularized by surrealists in the 1920s. Each artist would draw on a section of a piece of paper folded into thirds and pass it to two more artists to complete the composition. This is drawing yielded monster-like creatures named “exquisite corpses.”
“We came up with preliminary sketches of things that we would potentially want to do,” said Jessica DiCampli, graphic design major. “So it would either be of legs or a midsection, or a head. And then what we did is we brought all of our sketches and we showed our classmates and everybody voted for the designs of what we thought our classmates should do.”
Some of the body sections that made the cut included a carnivorous cabbage head, emu legs and the skeletal tail of a mermaid.
Aside from the sketching, the process included redrawing their designated section with a sharpie on 2-by-2 medium-density fiberboards (MDF), which are made from compressed wood. They then stained the MDF so they could distinguish between carved and uncarved parts of the wood as they began to cut out their designs. Subsequently, they added ink on a brayer and rolled it on the MDF to get the ink on it. For the last step, they ran it through the printing press, which is where the design is printed onto the paper.
“When you’re doing woodcut, it’s on an MDF and it’s pretty huge, it’s 2 feet by 2 feet, and you have to go in with carving tools but it has to be really precise and if you get off, like you have your own sketch on the wood, but when you’re using the carving tools, if you go over then you have to just make a new line,” said Christina Bruley, studio art major with a concentration in printmaking.
Sarah Gunia-Jensen, studio art major with a concentration in printmaking and painting, mentioned she enjoyed woodcutting.
“The other rewarding part is the relaxation-part of carving,” Gunia-Jensen said. “It’s like a way to de-stress.”
The project took the students about a month to complete and install. Because of COVID-19, the process was mostly independent and the students kept in contact through Instagram.
“I have a really good advanced group. Most of them were in my spring semester as well so there’s already been sort of this community that’s formed within the class and so I think it’s been a good way for everyone to sort of encourage each other,” Kussro said.
Jude Jakubec, graphic design major, expressed their excitement about seeing the different pieces come together.
“We have some weird body parts going so [I] can’t wait to figure out what kind of monsters we’re going to make,” Jakubec said. “It’s going to be a beautiful time.”
There will be an outdoor opening Friday, Nov. 13 at 4 p.m in the sculpture garden between Arbor Central and Arbor North following the COVID-19 community standards on the UHCL website. This pop-for those that cannot attend or do not feel comfortable attending to an opening.
As the Advance Printmaking students and Kussro install the exhibition, these exquisite corpse change the landscape between the Arbor and Arbor South buildings. Photo by The Signal Online Editor Alyssa Shotwell.
