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(This article is a re-post of the original onMidtown Brews. Pat Fallon and the students will be leading the Nov 6, 2008 Midtown Brews conversation. You canlearn more here. )
Pat Fallon, MFA, Professor & Chairperson, The Art Department & Professor, Ursuine Studies Core Program, Ursuline College, Cleveland, Ohio and students Beth Mastroianni and Steph Kasza of Ursuline College have offered to lead the Nov Midtown Brews conversation on Art and Advocacy. Last month, they offered a conversation sharing their insights into the value art brings to advocacy in service of global and local events.
- Branding Stories of Humanity on Mogulus (above)
- Branding Stories of Humanity on You Tube
- Branding Stories of Humanity Audio (102.4 MB) (102.4 MB)
Branding Stories of Humanity
With Pat Fallon, Steph Kasza, Beth Mastroianni
Pat Fallon: We’ve been talking about advocacy for some time and when I grew up we did advocacy in a very simple Girl Scout-way and it wasn’t universal but this was after the Great War, World War II, and the I did some at Antioch, but afterwards it wasn’t a big thing, Viet Nam and the 60’s kind of killed it. So, I am really excited, that we do it here, at Ursuline College and involve the students. So, the conversation we’re having right now is with Beth Mastroianni and Steph Kasza, who are both big shot seniors in our program and have taken the course, “Art and Advocacy.” I’m Pat Fallon, and I’m a Professor here in the Ursuline Studies program in the Art Department and also Chair of the Art Department, currently. And, we are sitting here talking about advocacy – this is some work I have done (pointing to hanging art work behind her) – I did about four years ago on Darfur. I know why I am passionate about what I am doing, but these women also have passion and I would like them to talk to me about it.
Beth Mastroianni: Well, one of the things I have found, with all of us as artists, is that we must absolutely make art, that is just something we have to do, just like a Banker must bank, or a Librarian must work in a library. And I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, this is our vocation. What I personally do, what I found to be most valuable in my work, is to make really beautiful images, and then having an uh-oh moment when you realize that what I’m saying with that beautiful image is not beautiful at all. What I’m trying to do is to tell you something. So, I want to grab your attention through beauty and then I want to sucker punch you with a message.
Stephanie Kasza: My work is a bit similar to Beth’s. I choose to create awareness in my pieces by taking two parallels that exist in the world that we might not realize and then putting them together. And currently what I’m working on is, people who don’t have to be concerned with how they’re going to eat their next meal and kind of taking their remnants of that and putting it together with starving babies in Africa who don’t have a morsel to eat. So, it’s kind of just pulling two things together and creating awareness of an issue that is very important in today’s society.
Pat Fallon: Following that up, I know why I do what I do. I’ve tried a lot of roots, I’ve been out on the streets, I’ve marched, and I’ve taken part in a lot of activities, written letters when necessary, but I’ve finally decided as Beth knows, I’m an artist and what I do is make art, so I use my art in the service of, so to speak, and don’t pull a punch kind of shove it in your face, but my goal has been to make visible what people don’t want to see. You know, it’s there, but they don’t want to know about it, they don’t want to know about Darfur, they don’t want to know about genocide. They don’t want to know that they actually cut limbs off, so that the boys will live but not be able to make a living and no one will marry them. It’s not murder, it’s mutilation. So, that’s why I choose this venue, and so I know what you’re doing, and I now you’re doing it because you’re artists, but what was they key that moved you in, how did you get involved?
Stephanie Kasza: Actually, this past summer I went to Chicago and I was walking in a back alley with my brother and I’ll never forget this moment, we were walking and I saw one man, he was carrying armfuls of groceries and there was like, not even fifty feet in front of him, another man digging through the trash. And to me, that was it. I took a picture of it and it was burned into my mind. Just how we can co-exist like that and not even realize that the hungry are like, ten feet from us.
Pat Fallon: We don’t even see each other.
Stephanie Kasza: Yes, exactly.
Beth Mastroianni: For me, I think, it’s sort of a, it’s kind like a double standard, or I call it “the double bind.” You do something, you say something, you walk the walk, or you talk the talk, but you don’t do both. And, it’s really important for me to do both. So, if I believe in something very strongly, art is how I’m going to let you know. Because I can’t always speak what I’m going to say, but I can make an image that will last indefinitely and you can find out what I’m going to say.
Pat Fallon: I think artists articulate better in their medium and that it can be any medium – that’s our gift – and that’s what you put in the service. I’m interested in to talk a little bit about what you found at Ursuline, because when I first came here I would not have expected this to be a place of advocacy, and then of course, Sister Diane dragged me to Fort Benning, and my job was to keep her from climbing the fence and getting arrested again, because that would have been an automatic five years, so I went to protect the nuns and got bit, it was the most moving funeral march I have ever been in and I know the Art Club participates to that and you have also done murals in schools here so we…these are also Co-Chair of the Art Club here.
Beth Mastroianni: Yes, we have a group called the Student Arts Organization for Peace and Justice.
Stephanie Kasza: Yes, we have another group called Women’s Watch, and it’s usually in March, early Spring, and what it is, is we get the list of names of people, mostly women and children under the age of eighteen who were killed from Cuyahoga Coroner, and we put their names, age, on figures and then silently march them through the campus. Just holding up the figures and bringing awareness, once again, to the campus. I think this past year we had eighty-seven figures that were marched around campus. This was the largest we’ve ever had and it’s just one more way to make people aware and let them see that these people in our community are dying from domestic violence. And it is definitely a very moving march.
Pat Fallon: Well, to give you a little bit of background on that, it happens every Spring – one of our Nuns was murdered, raped and abused in the woods here and we feel very strongly about the woods. I take classes to the woods and Sister Diane and some of the Sisters who taught here felt very bad because at the same time there was a woman in Cleveland who was raped, beaten up and killed and the newspapers, of course, didn’t cover that. What they covered was the Ursuline Nun. And they (the Ursuline Nuns) felt that was terrible. That is when Women Watch began, and began with a few figures they’ve cut wood out of which are painted red. I know that because every Spring I’m in the middle of night painting more figures because the number is growing and everybody says crime is decreasing – well, they must not be counting women, because that number is really growing. So, that’s the history on that. So there is a thing about that. There is also a…Fort Benning comes in because Dorothy Kazel, was one of our Nuns, this is her home, was her home and she was one of the three women, Church women, who were raped, and shot, and buried in El Salvador…What do we think art makes, or predicts for our future? I mean why do we think this will really change the world? I mean that’s a hope…
Beth Mastroianni: Art is one of the things that lasts, stands the test of time. I was lucky enough to just return from France, I went to the Louvre, it was packed to the gills with people and it was packed to the gills with ancient art to the present. And so, that was like a wake up call that said art is important, it does last, it does tell the message of the times.
Stephanie Kasza: See, for me, it’s the old cliché, “A picture says a thousand words.” You guys weren’t there to see what I saw in the alley but if I could show you that and show you every angle and every feeling about that then it just brings that moment that was so special to me to life for you guys and you can experience it as well.
Pat Fallon: That’s the magic of art. It’s the passion that pulls the viewer in. If it’s not there, it won’t work.
Stephanie Kasza: It’s not something you can leave at the office. I’m always thinking art.
Beth Mastroianni: Yes, always on, always… thinking…
Stephanie Kasza: Three o’clock in the morning I wake up and I’m thinking, “That’s what I need to do to fix that piece.” So, it’s not something you can separate yourself from because it’s so much a part of you that you always have it with you. Though you just can’t leave it at the office and come home and have a separate life. It is your life. It consumes almost everything you do…don’t stop creating, because once you stop it’s almost like your voice dies. No one, no one will see what you have to say. So, my big thing is, I’m never going to stop creating and making art and like Beth said, you just can’t create, you have to show because if I make wonderful things and it just sits in my house, my studio, that’s almost another way your voice dies.
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