Artist Statement Sarah Bastress

In Elizabeth Bishop's essay “Efforts of Affection” eulogizing her good friend the exacting poet Marianne Moore, she began with this rather unemotional introduction: "In the first edition of Marianne Moore’s Collected Poems of 1951 there is a poem originally called “Efforts and Affection.” In my copy of this book, Marianne crossed out the “and” and wrote “of” above it. I liked this change very much, and so I am giving the title “Efforts of Affection” to the whole piece."

 A couple years ago, I started working on a series of drawings called Efforts at Affection about loneliness, doubt, love, self-deprecation, and the mysteries of prepositions. I started right before the pandemic began, and they have become a significant marker of this time for me. A couple of them are in this show. Many of the other pieces I put up have not been seen much, made before or during the start of the pandemic and hung in my studio alongside my drawings, gathering meaning (for me) and sometimes dust. I consider them all to be my efforts at affection, when, for much of these last odd lonely years, I had so many I could not eulogize or give affection to. Also, they are a little silly and raunchy, as most of my efforts are. Love, Sarah.

Artist Statement Andrea Kaspryk

In a series of figurative, narrative paintings inspired by my personal experience of past inner conflict regarding my gender, I rely on universal symbols of horns and serpents, in particular the Ouroboros, a symbol of infinity, to reflect on and comment about it in visual images. Though my paintings hold a personal meaning to me and my particular transgender experiences, I also want to present them as open-ended to all viewers, so they can see see and create their own stories inspired by them. 

In several programatic paintings referencing DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man ink drawing, I put gender ambiguous figures in place of the man to suggest a variety of gendered figures can stand in place of universal model. These figures are presented as larger-than-life, Olympian victors, as if celebrating the ability to take a stand at a podium, after the sort of struggles shown in my other paintings.

I have also tried my hand at ceramic sculpture, recreating two dimensional images from my paintings in three dimensional form. This is an ongoing challenge and project that I plan to continue pursuing.  

Finally, I have also explored making relief prints of my paintings with mixed results.