Bryn Mawr College

GSSWSR Co-dean Raymond Albert and Associate Professor Kevin Robinson

GSSWSR students exhibit art

Sacha Bodner, a student at Bryn Mawr's Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, has chosen social work over photography as a career, but he still values the heightened awareness he has learned from his artistic practice and considers it an essential part of his life. Suspecting that he was not the only artist in the GSSWSR's student body, he approached Maria Gardell, the co-chair of the GSSWSR's student association, and proposed a new angle on the traditional meet-and-greet mixer: an exhibition of student art.

Gardell enthusiastically agreed, and the work of four GSSWSR students—Bodner, Sara Deichman, Nicky Zimmerman, and Diane Gibfried—is now hanging in the School's entrance lobby. On Wednesday, March 26, the exhibition opened with a community reception for students and faculty of the School. Student Amy Hostetter, a writer whose work has been published in The Sun magazine, read a poem inspired by her work with a client, and musical entertainment included a duet by Bodner and Isaac Garfield and performances on African drums and Australian didgeridoo by Nick Andrea. The artists discussed their work and its relationship to their studies.

Bodner displayed nine photographs, primarily portraits of people he met as a volunteer worker in Costa Rica, Ghana, Mexico, and Ukraine. "It's a challenge to try to get an honest moment, and it's very rewarding when people are willing to make themselves vulnerable, when they're comfortable enough to share themselves with you and to allow you to catch them as they are. I try to establish a relationship with the people I photograph, to put them at ease and let them know that I'm not there to take advantage of them."

For Bodner, much of photography's appeal lies in its call to be more observant and more aware of the significance of the things and processes that surround him every day. "When I took some of these photos, the camera's shutter was open for just a thousandth of a second. If there's that much beauty and meaning in a thousandth of a second, imagine how much there is in a whole second, or a minute, or a lifetime," he said.

Bodner worked briefly as a professional photographer, he said, but discovered that he disliked the feeling that his work was motivated by necessity rather than love of the art.

Deichman displayed nature photography. A number of her works were the products of a trip to the Galapagos Islands that fulfilled a dream she had cherished since childhood, she said. The photos were captured during hikes, and Deichman described her amazement at encountering a beach so full of sea lions that she and her fellow hikers had difficulty navigating a path around them. Many of the Galapagos animals made good subjects, she said, because they had no fear of humans.

Gibfried, who earned an A.B. from Bryn Mawr's undergraduate college as a Katharine McBride Scholar in 2006, began training as an artist and illustrator at the University of the Arts (then the Philadelphia College of the arts) in the late 1970s before leaving school to raise children. As a Bryn Mawr senior, she published an award-winning children's book, Brother Juniper, that she had developed in a Bryn Mawr creative-writing course. 

Her publisher hired someone else to illustrate Brother Juniper, but Gibfried is now at work on another children's book, and one of the pieces she displayed was an illustration from the work in progress, a drawing of a witch that she based on her grandmother. Gibfried's two other works shared the theme of aging. One, a photograph of a couple on the boardwalk at the Jersey shore that Gibfried took when she was an art student in the late 1970s, showed "something of the absurdity of aging. Thirty years later, the physical and psychological changes of getting older can still seem strange and even funny as part of my own 'older' experience," Gibfried said. The last work she discussed was a drawing of a friend of hers, an Itlaian man in his 80s, at work in his greenhouse.

"He's so vibrant and so full of wisdom," Gibfried said. "He was conscripted into the army and he was a prisoner of war, but he's still vital despite a personal history of loss." Gibfried referred to developmental psychologist Erik Erikson's theory of aging, which is required reading for most students at the School: "When you think of Erikson's 'integrity versus despair,' this man really exemplifies integrity, the wisdom that comes from looking back at a well-lived life."

Nicky Zimmerman displayed four paintings. A sunset landscape based on the logo of her hometown in Iowa usually hangs above her desk, she says, and it helps keep her grounded. It was matched by a sunrise landscape she painted during a vacation to Maine. Zimmerman also displayed two still lifes she produced during an oil-painting course. "The course was eleven weeks long, and some people finished a painting every week," she said. "I was proud to have done the two."

"I haven't had time for oil painting since I started school," Zimmerman said, and others agreed that their studies had resulted in a tapering off, though not cessation, of artistic production.

"I'm writing a lot of papers instead," Gibfried joked, but she noted that the same creative energy required to produce art goes into papers as well.

"And the process Sacha was describing is really very similar to what a therapist does," she said. "You are an observer, but you have to establish a relationship of trust with a client."

Andrea, who impressed the crowd with the circular breathing that allows him to produce a continuous tone from the didgeridoo for several minutes at a time, said that music helps him harness the creative energy of his clients. A first-year part-time student, Andrea works at a home for juvenile sex offenders whom he has introduced to African drumming.

"I think it's important to give them alternatives to a popular culture that isn't conducive to a healthy lifestyle," he said. "And they love drumming. It brings a lot of smiles."

So did the evening's events. "The community spirit was so alive tonight that I hope this will be the start of an annual student art exhibit at the Social Work School," said Gardell.

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Posted 3/27/2008 by Claudia Ginanni