from an INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE SYPSA

She's a romantic with a cutting edge. Columbus resident Stephanie Sypsa graduated from Columbus College of Art and Design in 2004. She hails from near Biloxi Mississippi, which is "just a hop,skip,and a jump fromNew Orleans and the Gulf." She has been married to Jason, a mechanical engineer, for nine years. Jason also is from the South, and "we love our visits there, and lots of family stuff." Sypsa possesses a strong sense of history. When she visited Dresden , Germany, during her OAC residency, she was haunted by awareness of the World War II bombings, and by the then recent damage done by HurricaneKatrina in the U.S.
When Sypsa visited Rome (during the residency) she was fascinated, indeed, engaged, by monuments, reliquaries, burials,cemeteries.--When I asked her what she was reading, she replied that she had been "spending most of my reading time on researching memory and memorials. I was struck by that feeling in Rome, how we need to connect, need connection to those gone before.. And memory. . . how we need to be remembered. I've been reading about
that, especially as regards Victorian times Funeral wreathes,hair lockets, that sort of thing.
I've even been researching light machinery from that period."
Sypsa appreciates photography, and incorporates photographs into her art. Yet, she
states, emphatically, "I am not a photographer.--At CCAD I was lucky to study art, painting and drawing. I did have a photography class that inspired me. In it I learned much about old time photography. I learned traditional stuff--Brown tones. Old nasty chemicals. Not digital.
I learned how you could color photographs, like painting!"
Stephanie and Jason like to travel, at home and abroad. "I love traveling," Sypsa said.
"We've been to Costa Rica, New Zealand, to Paris. Dresden. Rome. And, of course, we look at art, and I do take photographs.--I'm an over documentarian!"
Like most visual artists Sypsa likes to listen to music, and there again, her tastes include
"some vintage." She loves the music of Jeff Buckley "who died young and had such a beautiful voice. And I love Billie Holiday who died a long time ago."
Recently, Sypsa began to work out of a new studio in Grandview. She remains excited about belonging to the Phoenix Print Making Collective. She enjoys working at Riffe, especially being a teacher or assistant at Family Days.
"What's good about the Columbus art scene? New groups are emerging and merging. There's a new art scene in GrandView--Their gallery hop is huge! The art scene is what makes Columbus special. If not, I wouldn't stay here!"
Connections II, Ohio Artists Abroad, is open until April 8 and exhibits fourteen very contemporary and agile artists who created work during OAC residencies in Germany, Poland,and the Czech Republic. It is a varied and cerebral show and you are bound to see things you like and love and puzzle over.
The Ohio Arts Council's Riffe Gallery is at 77 S. High St. in Columbus, Ohio in the Verne Riffe building. Admission, like the best in art, is free.

STEPHANIE SYPSA at THE RIFFE

At the Riffe Gallery's Connections II, Ohioans Abroad exhibit STEPHANIE SYPSA's images serve as striking talismans for Women's History Month. Or Herstory month!
ENCLOSED IN GRAY MATTER I. consists of progressive images, three presentations of a young woman's vintage, somewhat colorless, face on three separate 8x10 inch papers. The first image is stark, earnest, unembellished. The second and third reprints of the same face have acquired overlays, marks,. . .symbols. Although Sypsa wants to convey the idea of "vintage" --the collar, the sweet earnest visage, the hair drawn back, parted in the middle--she has chosen images that lend themselves to chronological ambiguity. She suggests , I think, that we, as women, are stamped, or patterned, by cultures and events.
Superimposed marks, blocks, patterns--suggest the necessity of women to conform at home or in the work place. Yet, the same repetition can also symbolize the power of connection. Combining photography, xerox, prints,reprints and overlays,
with--graph paper, clear plastic, straight pins, and yes, thread --Sypsa conveys aspects of regularity and repetition, even factory work.
In the haunting AFTER IMAGE OF A YOUNG GIRL, photo lithograph, pins on paper, (24 x 36 inches) a single , indefinite , woman figure glows.--Well, part of the woman's face glows! So does part of her arm, and a purse--or midriff--no matter.
The purple-black-wine-velvet- background dominates, envelopes the woman.--Yet she shines thru! Her environment is Jung's "Dark" . Standing inside it, the woman calls to us from a distance,from the past, most likely. Thru stark , nearly primitive , rendering
the young girl becomes iconic, archetypal We can imbue her with meaning: Our mothers, their mothers,our sisters, our selves.
Sypsa earned her bachelor of arts at Columbus College of Art and Design in 2004. She has done free lance work for the Columbus Museum of Art and has taught continu
ing education classes for CCAD. In 2006 she took part in an Ohio Arts Council international residency at the Dresden Graphic workshop in Dresden Germany. She is a gallery assistant and preparator at the Riffe Gallery. Her phone interview follows.--Happy Women's Day, everyone!

SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!

March. Women'shistory month. I'll begin my annual celebration by writing about a guy who loves women! --He thinks that 'Women and flowers are God's greatest projects!"--In fact, Jerry Tollifson, State Art Education, Consultant Emeritus, was recently asked to remove his female
totems, sculptures, from a Westerville Gallery. Fearing a lawsuit he removed the sculptures almost immediately!
Nothing succeeds like notoriety. When I spoke to Tollifson on February 29, he said that The Other Paper had taken up his cause, and as a result, one of his "censored" nudes had sold almost immediately.--Like the next day! (I haven't read The Other Paper article yet, but I shall! They're usually right on target in that sort of matter)
Tollifson goes to church each Sunday. I didn't ask where.--And afterward, still wearing church-appropriate suit and tie, he visits the Ohio Art League where, among frayed jeaned paint spattered artists, he practices drawing and painting from live nude models.
"Yes," he admitted, "So far all of the nude models have been women, and some of the women artists say there should be men models too."--Right on!
In his letter to me Tollifson , in describing himself, wrote " a problem has arisen. Tollifson
has been suffering from an identity crisis. He doesn't quite know whether he identifies more
with Larry Flint, the pornographer and publisher of Hustler magazine, or with Michael Angelo, the 15th century artist whose nude paintings were objected to by officials of the Catholic Church at the time.--Apparently Tollifson's crisis has been resolved by hismaking a choice of identity, for when last seen he was searching for places where he could purchase fig leaves."
YOU TOO can work from live models at the Ohio Art League Sundays 1 to 4 pm. It's not necessary to reserve, but for more information call theOAL at 614-299 8225. Jerry Tollifson's
Fabulous Flowers will be shown at a one man show at Inniswood Park during August, 2008.
The artist is a big tall guy with a lot of cool white hair, and he often wears what is, or is similar to, a white panama suit, like the one the author Tom Wolfe wears.--Perhaps Jerry should pose fully clothed, for a Sunday afternoon modeling session.--Jerry, on a grayday your letter was a breath of fresh air!
ELECTRIC LADIES : Last month I was reborn, renascent as poet Edna St VincentMillay would say, when I visited Electric Lady Land at Mahan Gallery, 717 N.High. (More than once!) Liz Markus lives in New York and her large"Protector " abstracts were to die for!
The peripheral remarks by Colleen Grannen, co director and gallery guide, informed me, beamed me up! Grannen's sense of Now and Then and Popular Culture was, indeed, a breath of fresh air. Kime (Kimmy)Buzzelli, now of L.A.,blew me away with her big neo romantic fashion drawings.--Well, romantic is a non linear state of time and mind). Lithe women,"retro flower women,"Grannen explained. Figures, graceful and lyrical, cutting edge, on big paper. Flowers tendrils,stenciled on walls by Kime Buzzelli herself. The woman is an NFL running back! (New Fashion Life.)--I found Kime's blogg. I wanted to visit Show Pony in L.A.! I wanted to be young and thin, like those lithe sixties women on Kime's big papers. Iraq was blowing up. More Ohioans were losing jobs. But Liz Markus had painted abstracts in honor of such icons asJim Hendryx (sp) and John Lennon,who wore helmets and goggles or dark glasses, and were,as Colleen said, "protectors."-- I want to live in Electric Lady Land, even if only part time!