The Arts EAC to exhibit Pal's work Art puts an emphasis on healing and remembrance By JULIA BIGGS Of The Edge “Remembered Experience: An Agnes Pal Retrospective” opens Friday night at 6 p.m. at the Edwardsville Arts Center. The exhibit, which runs through March 27, features the sculpture work of 79 year old Glen Carbon resident Agnes Majtinsky Pal, a Holocaust survivor. Pal's work explores the relationship of the creative act of art making as a vehicle for healing and remembrance. Curated by SIUE Museum Interim Director Erin Vigneau Dimick and retired SIUE Art Professor Paulette Meyers, this exhibit promises to be educational, thought provoking and emotional due to the subject matter behind the pieces. Meyers, who taught art at SIUE for 30 years before retiring and who was Pal's professor, explained how Pal ended up in the Edwardsville area. “She had gotten her BFA at the University of Michigan soon after she came to the United States. It was in graphic design,” Meyers said. “She and her husband were living in New York City, and she was working as a graphic design person there when she was younger.” After Pal's husband, Alexander, was hired to teach mathematics at SIUE, the couple moved to Edwardsville in 1970, and Pal began taking art classes at SIUE. “She took quite a few studio areas. Metals was what she loved,” Meyers recalled. “She learned everything there was to learn in metals in her additional classes she was taking, and then she applied for the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program with a tremendous portfolio of course.” During her studies in the MFA program, Pal decided to focus her art and thesis on her personal experiences of the Holocaust. “She had done a few pieces involving the Holocaust before but not with so much emphasis,” Meyers said. “Once she got into the program, that's solely what she dealt with – her experiences and her family's
For The Edge
"Number," an extensive work by Agnes Majtinsky Pal. experiences in that horrific and historical war.” “The bulk of her work in the later part of her career and her thesis itself was all about interpretations of her experiences in Hungary and Austria,” Vigneau Dimick said. “Some are not as easy to discern right away because the works are abstract, but some of them are very, very clear right from the start.” “I think a lot of the Holocaust survivors are reticent to talk about their experience and that was definitely true of Agnes,” Meyers said noting when Pal decided to finally pursue her painful past
experiences in her art. “One of the things I think that helped was I had invited her to go with my husband and son many years ago – maybe 15 years ago – to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. She flew up, and then we picked her up. We went through that museum which is absolutely an incredible experience. It's heart-wrenching, but I think that was a time that she decided that her story needs to be told.” Over 30 of Pal's art pieces, which are on loan to the SIUE Museum, will be on display at the Edwardsville Art Center for the
For the Intelligencer
Another work by Agnes Majtinsky Pal.
exhibit, “Remembered Experience: An Agnes Pal Retrospective” that runs from Friday to March 27. The pieces in the show range from jewelry to sculpture to hollowware (vessels). One of the largest pieces in the exhibit, entitled “Number,” will be displayed as soon as you enter the main gallery. “It's eight feet by eight feet, and it's a sculpture made of 224 copper plates, approximately six inches each, that have been hydraulically pressed into this convex spherical shape,” Vigneau Dimick said. “Each plate has a number on it which corresponds to the numbering of prisoners that the Nazis did. And some of the spheres also have photographs of people's faces that have been baked onto the surface. They are photographs of people from her life.” “Then all of the plates are lashed together as a giant quilt which hangs from the ceiling, Vigneau Dimick added. “The whole idea of it has to do with the dehumanization of people. The whole idea of them being numbered and branded like cattle.” One piece, entitled “Chalice,” is a tribute to Pal's grandmother who was a farmer. “She raised sheep and produced cheese. She snuck food into labor camps to people that she knew and also strangers who were there at the labor camps,” Vigneau Dimick said. “And she was caught along with her son and sent to Auschwitz and was killed.” “The chalice denotes sustenance yet danger, depicted by the barbed wire wrapping, the tower structure that references the Nazi’s lookout towers and a single blood red, garnet in the form of a flame in the center of the goblet,” Pal writes as part of the description of this piece. “It's a complex piece using a process called reticulation,” Meyers
February 26, 2015
pointed out. “There's some very large pieces. There's some very, very beautiful tiny pieces because her metalsmithing is very sculptural,” Vigneau Dimick noted. “She also makes rings and brooches. The brooch may be only three inches by an inch and a half. So some of them are extremely delicate and yet they are still articulating ideas about her experience.” One of the smallest pieces is a sterling silver brooch with a rough aquamarine stone and silver casting made of burnt-out wood. It is entitled, “Icy Descent, Holding Her Hand.” Pal writes in her resume the story behind this piece. “I have memories of being marched by the Germans down snowy and icy mountains, holding onto my mother’s hand as we were herded along to the next labor camp. Our campsite was very scenic and overlooked the town. We were strategically placed at the top edge of a dam overlooking an enormous lake. Hearing them talk, our elders suspected our captors were using us as human shields against bomb attacks by their enemy. A cavernous room served to house us all, men, women and children. We slept on the floor on top of just a thin layer of straw. As we later learned, our elders were correct. We had served as human shields against the allied bomb raids.” Every piece in the exhibit has a story behind it, written by Pal, which will be posted below each piece so that it can be understood by the viewer. “We're all very, very excited. It really is a retrospective,” Vigneau Dimick said. Artwork made by Lincoln and Liberty Middle School students will be on display in the EAC's Dennis
On the Edge of the Weekend
9