Linda F. Robbennolt
Art and Archaeology: A Parallel Process
Archaeology is the sifting through the physical residue of an entire culture, so that we might know more about the individuals of that culture, and therefore the relationship of ourselves as individuals in the present to the individual of the past.
Art making is the sifting through the emotional and experiential residue of an individual (the artist), so that we might know more about the culture that individual exists in, and that culture's relationship to a history broader than itself.
Professor Robbennolt's project will involve the making of art in the studio after having collected information working with an archaeological excavation in Rome, Italy for two summers. She will work in the studio to print, paint, and make new images that deal with how it is that we perceive ourselves through the search for information from physical evidence as opposed to the written history of our culture. She has been constructing her own physical evidence through photographing "the search" during the past two summers, to be used to construct visual conclusions in the studio.