Harlan Gallery at Seton Hill University Presents Diane Samuels
Diane Samuels’ work is featured in private and public collections, and is widely exhibited internationally. Recently, Samuels has been the winner of two international competitions for permanent site-specific works: in 2006 she completed “Lines of Sight,” installed in a two-story glass pedestrian bridge (1900 square feet of structurally integral artwork made of 800,000 individual elements), joining two new Life Sciences buildings at Brown University, and in 2004 she completed “Luminous Manuscript” (a 22-foot-high monumental stone and glass mosaic tablet) at the Center for Jewish History in New York. In 1998 she built a commissioned memorial garden in Grafeneck, Germany, site “A” of the so-called euthanasia experiments in 1940.
The exhibit at Harlan Gallery will include portions of “Mapping Sampsonia,” a recent piece by Samuels inspired by the Pittsburgh street where she lives. During a six-month period in 2005, Samuels photographed the entire 17,388 square-foot roadbed of Sampsonia Way in minute topographical detail. The resulting 5,642 digital photos were printed individually at 1:17 scale. These were then mounted into glass “cobbles” and re-assembled as a paved photo-surface, framed by an edge of clear glass tiles, on top of a plaster cast of a 48-foot long section of the alley. Hand-engraved into the surface of the “cobbles” are excerpts from Samuels’ Sampsonia Way archive – impromptu comments of passers-by, historical information, and thoughts about passageways. Mounted onto the undersurface of each of the tiles is something found on the alley – either a material remnant such as a plant specimen or a candy wrapper, or a snippet from the oral histories of current residents hand-transcribed onto a tiny index card. Like so much of Samuels’ work, “Mapping Sampsonia” – both the process and the art itself – is an implicit commentary on the dignity of work, the importance of attention and care, and the relationship of collective knowledge and individual meaning.
Diane Samuels’ bio: Diane Samuels was born in 1948 in New York and raised in New Orleans; she currently resides in Pittsburgh. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in fine arts from Carnegie Mellon University and a diploma from the Institute in Arts Administration at Harvard University. She serves on the boards of the Mattress Factory, the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, and the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University.
Harlan Gallery is a professional exhibition space open to the public free of charge, located in Reeves Hall on Seton Hill’s Greensburg, Pa. campus. Harlan Gallery is open during the academic year: Monday – Thursday 5 – 8 p.m., Friday 1– 3 p.m. and Sunday 1 – 4 p.m. For more information on Harlan Gallery, please contact Harlan Gallery Director Carol Brode at 724-830-1071 or brode@setonhill.edu.
Seton Hill University, founded by the Sisters of Charity, is a coeducational Catholic liberal arts university in Greensburg, Pa. Chartered in 1918, Seton Hill offers more than 30 undergraduate programs and nine graduate programs, including an MBA. Seton Hill brings the world to its students through its distinguished lecturers and nationally and internationally renowned centers. Recognized three times by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the nation’s Top 100 Entrepreneurial Universities, Seton Hill has also been named one of the Best in the Northeast by The Princeton Review and one of Pennsylvania’s Top 100 Businesses by Pennsylvania Business Central. In addition, Seton Hill has been named a University of Distinction by Colleges of Distinction, an organization founded by a group of concerned parents, educators and admissions professionals. For more information on Seton Hill please visit www.setonhill.edu or call 1-800-826-6234.
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Media contacts:
Becca Baker, Associate Director of Media Relations
724-830-1069 / 724-689-3599 (cell) / bbaker@setonhill.edu
Carol Brode, Director of Harlan Gallery
brode@setonhill.edu / 724-830-1071