2015-16 Sarah Tortora

Sarah Tortora, the 2015-16 Alice C. Cole '41 Fellow, is a visual artist who was born in New Haven, CT. At the time of this fellowship she was working between New England and Indiana, and was a visiting assistant professor in sculpture at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. She received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and served as Lecturer of Contemporary Art at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Phildelphia while there. Shortly after graduating, she attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. In 2016 she had solo exhibitions at GRIN Gallery (Providence, RI), Reynolds Fine Arts (New Haven, CT), and CAS Arts Center (Livingston Manor, NY).

a gallery with white walls and shiny wood floor; three free-standing sculptures and 1 small wall sculpture are visible in the space

Fickle Ground

Jewett Art Gallery

March 14 - April 21, 2017

Fickle Ground featured sculptural works exploring the authoritative air of longevity present in the classical forms of friezes, columns, and steles, wearing their imposing militarism on the surface, like a Potemkin village. These works embody the premise that every equestrian monument inevitably becomes a Trojan horse, and that by passively consuming sculptural archetypes we give credence to the postured narratives of history.

large freestanding roughly hexagonal sculpture with three forms like abstracted horse legs, one black, one gray, one brown; the space between the black and gray forms is yellow, the space between gray and brown is white

Stele, 2016.

large freestanding roughly hexagonal sculpture with mottled silvery surface with large incised red X

Stele, 2016 (reverse side).

freestanding sculpture roughly in the form of a box with a flat slab on top, resting on two rectangular boxes. The boxes and slab are roughly painted white, the central box has a facade of 4 black angular forms interspersed with areas of pink, ochre, and tan

Pallbearers, 2016.

white walled gallery with a tall vertical sculpture with flared green top, white rectangular middle, and two angled gray 'legs' at the bottom on left; the right wall bears blue text reading 'Sarah Tortora, Fickle Ground, March 14 - April 21, 2017'

Foe, 2016.

Sarah Tortora artist website

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seal of the Alice C. Cole '42 awards - line drawing of a woman with chisel and paint brush, surrounded by circular borders and oak leaves

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