Susan Mikula: Island
Susan Mikula: Island. In the hands of a master musician, distortion is a tool to be celebrated, manipulated, painted with. A great guitarist knows exactly what shade of evil noise best conveys what they want us to feel. The seemingly random squallings of Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” are actually anything but.
So it is with the photography of Susan Mikula, who uses old Polaroid cameras and expired instant film to produce her haunted and haunting work. But which film to pair with which camera, which lens, what time of day, what light? Years of observation and experimentation have honed her approach in ways that are authoritative and authentic. With Island, Mikula drops the viewer into the realm of dream; the vertiginous displacement we feel is not accidental.
What we are seeing is the unforgiving 30-acre shelf of granitic bedrock that forces the Connecticut River to make an abrupt eastward hitch in Bellows Falls, halfway down the river’s 400-mile journey from source to sea. But we see it through Mikula’s eyes, the way she wants us to see it, veiled in the distortion of her choosing.
Her vision, simultaneously rooted in but also floating above the land, is a perfect fit for the Island. Long the industrial heart of Bellows Falls, the Island was first the gathering, ceremonial, and burial place for Abenaki and Iroquois people. The Island itself has been defined by human manipulation for centuries.
Originally firmly attached to the mainland, this bit of peninsula became surrounded by water when the Bellows Falls Canal, chartered to circumnavigate the falls, blasted its way through the bedrock at the turn of the 19th century. The first bridge on the Connecticut River had already been built in Bellows Falls in 1785, and the railroad arrived in 1849, binding the land in Lilliputian servitude to the engine of American commerce. Resort hotels, farm machinery, armament manufacturers, paper mills, and busy roadways all came and went. Now quiet reigns, as the palimpsest that is the Island awaits its next chapter.
Mikula has a painter’s eye, and any journalistic conventions of photography largely fall away as she homes in on her compositions. Artists Franz Kline and Stuart Shils are as much a part of Mikula’s approach as photographers Dorothea Lange or Henri Cartier-Bresson. Over a career of more than 30 years, Mikula has gone on a singular journey with a unique instrument. To immerse ourselves in Island is to immerse ourselves in that journey, in that place, guided by a master.
— Charlie Hunter, curator
ACCESSIBILITY NOTICE
This exhibit is located in the Ticket Gallery, which is on a raised platform off of the main gallery. To access the Ticket Gallery, guests need to go up five shallow steps with a railing.
RELATED EVENTS
October 26, Saturday, 5 p.m. — Opening of Four New Exhibits
November 19, Tuesday, 5:30 p.m. — Art Talk: Susan Mikula and Charlie Hunter
SELECTED PRESS
BEST PHOTO PICKS OCTOBER 2024 — What Will You Remember (10/2/24)
RELATED RESOURCES
Installation views (coming soon)
Virtual tour (coming soon)
Ask the Artist!
