This semester, the silk-screen studios have produced a colorful array of eye-catching posters, advertising everything from political action to Sex on Mars. Recently, however, I found a small invitation taped onto my front door. Much like the posters I’d seen around campus, the invitation is a monochrome image printed on a vellum of swimming sperms. Each sperm has a little googly-eye glued onto the surface of the poster.
These posters and the little invitation stuck to my door are for the opening reception for Andrea Fritsch’s Senior Art Exhibition in the Fisher Hall this Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m. The exhibition’s title, “Seventeen,” seems amusing printed alongside the sperm.
However humorous the posters seem to be, they advertise an exhibit that deals with some serious cultural concerns. Fritsch’s paintings explore the complex issues surrounding teen pregnancy. The works quietly confront these issues as a cultural phenomenon while still grounding them in Fritsch’s personal experiences.
“The body of work includes imagery portraying my friends who have had teen pregnancies,” Fritsch said. “Since 17 of 50 females in my high school class were pregnant or had babies before they graduated, many of my classmates faced this situation.”
While the teen pregnancy rate in Fritsch’s hometown, Lake Mills, Wis., is not unusual for a small town in the United States, the issue is still taboo and many question these girls’ moral integrity. In contrast with older married women for whom motherhood is glorified as a traditional virtue, pregnant teens frequently receive neither support nor encouragement. This reality, in turn, influences many young women’s lives by instilling a fear of pregnancy and of sexuality overall.
“My hope in producing this work,” Fritsch said, “is to confront my own fears and prejudices about teen pregnancy as well as encourage others to think about their own relationship with this issue.”
One painting is an unassuming portrait of one of Fritsch’s friends from high school. The painting combines oil paints and collage to produce a very beautiful image. The piece is composed much like a school yearbook portrait would be except for the fact that the woman is holding a baby pig in her arms. While she describes her work as landing somewhere between the personal and the political, Fritsch is able to successfully create an interesting variety of very eloquent statements through a number of media.
Some of her works, however, take a more grotesque attitude towards the theme. One very beautiful work, for example, was created by applying beeswax to a plywood base adding a pleasant smell to an otherwise disturbing relief painting.
Together, the works in the exhibition are both difficult and touching. The show is also emotionally balanced by a series of sculptural portraits that light-heartedly represent Fritsch’s impressions of her friends’ personalities. These works are overtly personal but are nonetheless very interesting aestheticly.
Fritsch conveys an intense level of introspection in her work, but is capable of presenting this narrative in a very approachable way. Her work is not reactionary.
She effectively creates a thread between personal experience and overt social commentary that doubles back on itself and swells up with new meaning.