Professor’s Exhibit Covers Walls in Visual Vibrations
by Scott Weaver

Through Friday, Sept. 28, the walls of Fisher Hall will wear the works of Audra Skuodas, former Adjunct Professor of Studio Art. The show, titled Generation, Vibration, Reverberation, Transformation and Regeneration, is an impressive collection of paintings, drawings and mixed media constructions.
Initially, the most striking impression of the show is Skuodas’s obvious meticulous attention to color. The best example of this precision is the series of large square paintings in which monochromatic tones occupy the entirety of each canvas. From this background, Skuodas builds up a number of layers consisting of distorted figures of the female body interwoven with an abstract series of patterns formed by a variety of different shapes and symbols.

Generation, Vibration, Reverberation: Former Adjunct Professor of Studio Art Audra Skuodas has exhibit at Fisher Hall. (photo by Tom Shortliffe)

The layout of the gallery itself is reminiscent of wallpaper, not only in the way it envelops the room but also in the resounding focus on patterns. This move seems to implicate the viewer into a visual metaphor for the concepts of “self”: much like wallpaper, the idea of the “self” is an interior construction. Skuodas agrees that her work is, to some extent, about the “self,” but refrains from denoting her work as exclusively pertaining to herself. “I work from the premise that that which is the most deeply personal is also that which transcends into the universal,” Skuodas once wrote. Rather than segregating her work as a distinct discipline, she sees her art as a process of connection and distillation, transforming circumstance into a gestalt or emotional perception — “that place where we feel things,” Skuodas said.

Skuodas is also convinced on the importance of beauty. “The beautiful is so essential in my life,” she said. Skuodas feels that we as a culture are continuously being desensitized by the world around us. Amidst all the fervor of identity politics, Skuodas argues that the multiple layers of identity we have developed over years of acculturation are only revealing of our multiple realities. When looking at the paintings and drawings in Fisher, one understands the importance of interwoven layers and as Skuodas points out, the beauty of her work is most apparent at the point where the layers of the painting meet. “We construct intellectual maps of reality in which life is reduced to its general outlines, but beyond these lies its essence, its spirit,” she said.

It is important not to overlook the remarkable figural images scattered throughout the large panels and smaller drawings. At first glance, these images seem extremely violent, perhaps due to their seeming obliteration behind the layers of colored dots and symbols. The figures are almost crammed into the corners of the frame or reaching with a solitary hand into the frame from below. The words, which appear on the smaller format drawings, also appear to sustain an intense passion. “The visible made by the invisible, desecration — violation. The spirit defiled, atrocities reign” reads one panel. Skuodas maintains that her process of distillation makes these female figures less representational than symbols themselves for a more universal condition.
Skuodas uses her elements — space, symbol, figure and sometimes word — to elicit an abstract, almost intangible sentiment within both her and her viewer.
Quite effectively, Skuodas’s work manages to be all at once aesthetically interesting enough to entice further attention and vague enough to require it. Upon further reflection, the interaction between patterns, words and figures seems to take on a visual vibration of its own, each panel finding its own subconscious string within the viewer.
Perhaps the biggest drawback to this show is the fact that a large and important portion of Skuodas’s body of work is not present. Many of the pieces present are based on her work with books. Unfortunately, due to the difficulties of displaying such works, they were excluded in the show. However, approaching the layers of her paintings or drawings as one would approach the distinct sense of reality one enjoys with a book allows for a better understanding of the interior compositions of Skuodas works.