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Community Corner

Local Artist Featured in Anniversary Exhibit

Sue Zwick will be featured in The College of Saint Elizabeth's 150th Anniversary show starting Tuesday.

Abstract angles from rigid buildings and beauty in the symmetry between man and nature define Sue Zwick’s photography.  Without cropping or the use of Photoshop, she captures momentary instances: the leg of a man striding, as his shadow reflects his entire body.

“I try to make art out of architecture,” Zwick said.  “It doesn’t matter what your tool (camera) is.  Your eye makes the difference.  I took one picture with a disposable camera that was featured in a gallery.”

Architecture is usually depicted as straight lines and right angles.  All of Zwick’s work is angled so that buildings hang in midair or meet together at the tip.  She defines these buildings by craning her neck or even lying on her back in order to achieve the perfect shot.

“I have always been a keen observer,” she said.

A great lover of unusual buildings, Zwick has recently expanded her horizons by doing nature photography. 

Now the Sisters of Charity are celebrating their 150th anniversary at The College of Saint Elizabeth in Morristown with a The Spirit of Charity Art Exhibit. Zwick, as usual, took a different view. 

“Mine depicts begging for charity,” she said.  “What must it feel like to be homeless and ask for peoples’ help?”

The show will open Sept. 8 with a reception at 4:30 p.m. in the Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery, located in the Annunciation Center on campus, 2 Convent Road. Following this will be a church service on campus at 7 p.m., following the opening, Sister Helen Prejean will be giving the reflection.  Sister Prejean wrote the book, which became a film, "Dead Man Walking."

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Zwick's previous work has been on display in the past months at The College of Saint Elizabeth. The gallery was arranged nearby the outdoor amphitheater, so that those who came to see the plays were encouraged to view the artwork during intermission.  The latest exhibit was “The Great Swamp,” a nature preserve that spans Morris County and some of Somerset County.

Zwick used two landmarks for her Great Swamp exhibit: Chatham and the Great Swamp Education Center.

“I like the idea of man’s footprint in nature,” she said.  That was what she said she had in mind as she searched the nature preserve.

One of her photos featured a fencepost in the middle of the Great Swamp.  It had frayed chicken wire sticking out at odd angles.  “It was quietly sitting there in nature, but man had clearly been there.”

She saw the beauty in one piece she calls her personal Rorcharch Test: it is a hardly identifiable rotting grill with rust in leaf-like patterns. 

“To me, it was beautiful,” she said.  “It had a biomorphic shape with the pattern of leaves beside it.”   

Zwick takes a very architectural view with her work.  Man’s footprint can be seen in each of her pieces.  “I found a structure in the Great Swamp,” she said.

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The structure was more like a tent or a yurt, the size of a room. 

“With architecture I tend to look up in general.  Like how I was looking out from inside the yurt to see this scene.”  The scene she refers to is the snowcapped branches of tree seen through the doorway.

Others featured in the gallery took photographs that were meant to look “pretty,” Zwick said.  “I took a different view in what I saw.  Photography is not just a pretty landscape.”

She wants people to scrutinize her work closely. “I want viewers to think ‘What am I looking at?’  ‘Where was she?’”

Zwick chose to shoot the Great Swamp during the winter time because “I love going in the snow.”  It makes her feel “like I’m a million miles away.”

Though not an architect, she has always had an appreciation for buildings.  She studied architecture and read about designs.

For the past nine years, Zwick’s photography experience was always with architecture.  She said switching to landscape photography “pushed her further.”

Zwick’s upcoming project will be gestures as part of “The Human Form Exhibit.”  That will be featured starting on Saturday, Sept. 12 at the Framing Mill on 411 Ridgewood Road in Maplewood.

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