02/28/2025
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Welcome Saaba Lutzeler to our Reclaim the Muse - Boundless Creations event on Saturday, March 8 @7:30PM at Union Avenue Christian Church.
In her newest mixed media self portrait series "Mornings, 2025", presented especially for IHS, thread becomes an embellishing detail rather than the primary medium. It emphasizes lines and planes made on the surface of book and newspaper pages. The text on these pages acts like background texture until closer investigation; then it serves as Lutzeler’s literal backdrop, documenting the contemporary political, cultural, and economic goings-on while the foreground self portraits externalize Lutzeler’s complex identity as a half African, half White, middle aged woman in the Midwestern United States. Each piece represents one moment in each day of the year 2025 and includes a written description of Lutzeler’s experience of the moment. After making the first 70 pieces, the thread connecting them began to seem less like Lutzeler’s mirror, and more like humanity’s mirror, honestly acknowledging the triumphs and the trash dumps; the breathtaking and the heartbreaking; the fatuousness and the paralysis of life –in short, the human condition! Lutzeler’s hundreds of mini images can hang together as one big composition that illustrates this story like a climate map, or as decorative stand-alone little art pieces.