Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

For Immediate Release:

Dia De Los Muertos

Artists Invitational Printmaking Exhibition & Celebration

Saturday, October 28th

Open to the public

7-9 pm

The Auburn Fellowship (www.auuf.net) will be hosting a Dia de los Muertos Celebration and a Printmaking Artists Reception on Saturday, October 28 from 7-9 pm.

The event is open to the public. Local art will also be displayed in addition to a beautifully crafted altar with ofrendas by the Kaiser/Zabawa and Frey/Hein families. Special music will feature "The Living Daylights."

The printmaking show is by invitation. The selected artists are established printmakers from across the country. Kim W. Fink of Grand Forks, ND; Diane Jacobs of Los Angeles, CA; Carol Schiffelbein of Vestavia Hills, AL; Christopher Cannon of Dekalb, IL; and Aline Feldman of Columbia, MD.

Several artists are described below:

Diana Jacobs was born and raised on Long Island. She began studying art as a teenager and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. After moving to Los

Angeles she received certificates in both botanical and zoological illustration from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Ms. Jacobs background in the art community is divers-from working with commercial artists on Madison Avenue, gallery work on Melrose, as a freelance illustrator at the Huntington Gardens to teaching at Otis-Parsons. In the last thirteen years she has focused on her studio work. Her mixed media and printwork has been internationally exhibited and shown throughout the US. Ms. Jacobs work has also appeared in feature films and television.

Most recently she completed illustrations for "The Memory Bible," by Gary Small, created a work for "The Book of Lies," a large scale collaborative piece by Eugenia Butler, and was an Arts panelist at the Conference of World Affairs, University of Colorado at Boulder.

For Aline Feldman, what began as an interest in landscape is now a passion that sends her above the earth in a four-seated Cessna to study the colors, contours, and energy of the land beneath her. In her studio, Feldman uses aerial photographs and sketches to carve a scene into a block of wood, usually pine. Her work is included in many collections, including the National Museum of American Art, the National Museum of Natural History, the Library of Congress, and collections from London to Honolulu.

Feldman's distinctive "white line" method calls for a spare, striking image to be carved into a single block of wood, a practice historically used by artists in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the 1920's and 1930's. Feldman also became enchanted with the soft, planar color of the Japanese prints she found in a Washington gallery. She has studied from Japanese printmaster, Unichi Hiratsuka and uses Japanese inks, brushes, and paper in her work, granting it a precious and luminous appeal. Her work is unique in its adherence to Japanese flatness and simplicity, and in the way the land and its inhabitants become altered when seen from Feldman's perch.

Feldman also creates patterns, but by flattening out the perspectives depicted in her landscapes with the use of pure strong colors that act to negate some of the effect of distance. These colors then interact with each other to create another sort of abstract color dynamics. One can enjoy the colors without needing to relate them to a particular landscape view. "Paradox of Place I" has one looking down from

a skyscraper without getting dizzy, the viewer held in place by the color blocks. Feldman does not usually introduce people into her images. Her scenes of distant places are most successful as one admires the artist's ability to keep the recognizable scene while at the same time employing arbitrary color, that is, non-naturalistic colors.

Aline Feldman studied with Werner Drewes in St. Louis and Un'ichi Hiratsuka in Washington. Based on her studies of Japanese printmaking techniques, and using the finest Japanese papers, she creates imaginary landscapes such as this dizzying urban view of towering skyscrapers. Paradox of Place was selected from The Washington Print Club's third Prints: Washington exhibition in 1997 for the first multi-color cover of the Quarterly.

Carol Schiffelbein is a multi media artist, with many interests including the environment, travel, languages and belief systems of different cultures. She creates prints, handmade paper, handmade books and also enjoys teaching and lecturing.

Creating with an experimental approach, Carol uses several processes singularly or in combination and the imagery in her work straddles the line between representation and abstraction. She uses a combination of traditional printmaking techniques. Her books incorporate papers created from recycled paper and natural fibers. She experiments with paper, form, color and texture which are an extension of her feelings and reactions to life.

Carol was born in Chicago, IL. She has a BA in Art from Chapman University of Orange, CA. Special studies in Crafts & Spanish with the Museo de Anthropologia, Mexico City. Graduate studies at Long Beach State and Otis Art Institute. Workshops in Handmade Paper at Fukuhara and Yamagata, Japan. Printmaking with Ron Pokrasso of Santa Fe, NM. Book Arts with Sas Colby of Taos, NM. Printmaking with Bluestone Editions of Santa Ana, CA and Monoprints with Santa Reparata Art School of Florence Italy.

Conrad Ross organized the upcoming show that will showcase the invited artists and begin the Dia de los Muertos celebration at the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Auburn, AL. He can also be reached at the following e-mail address for additional information. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Conrad is a practicing artist in Auburn and a retired professor of Art from the Auburn University Department of Art who was born in Chicago, Illinois. He is an important American artist/printmaker who has been described as "a contemporary Marco Polo". He constructs images in his own works that refer to cultures that were once remote from us in times before modern travel, media, and the Internet. Conrad brings over six decades of creative experience to the direction of the Wycross Press. The Press is devoted to experimental printmaking. Conrad has had over forty solo exhibitons, 400 juried and invitational shows, and over forty years of lectures and demonstrations. As a university professor he is dedicated to maintaining the highest level of artistic integrity at the Press. His discerning eye brings a delightful variety of gifted artists to Wycross editions.

Amy Kaiser and friends will be exhibiting a handmade Dia de los Muertos altar with ofrendas. The celebration is a time for the dead to return home and visit loved ones, feast on their favorite foods and listen to their favorite music. Family members honor their deceased with ofrendas or offerings which may consist of photographs, bread, other foods, flowers, toys and other symbolic offerings.

Dia de los Muertos is a ritual the indigenous people had been practicing for at least 3,000 years. "The pre-Hispanic people honored duality as being dynamic," said Christina Gonzalez, senior lecturer on Hispanic issues at Arizona State University. "They didn't separate death from pain, wealth from poverty like they did in Western cultures."

Today, Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico and in certain parts of the United States and Central America.

"It's celebrated different depending on where you go," Gonzalez said.

Today, people don wooden skull masks called calacas and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. The wooden skulls are also placed on altars that are dedicated to the dead. Sugar skulls, made with the names of the dead person on the forehead, are eaten by a relative or friend, according to Mary J. Adrade, who has written three books on the ritual.

In rural Mexico, people visit the cemetery where their loved ones are buried. They decorate gravesites with marigold flowers and candles. They bring toys for dead children and bottles of tequila to adults. They sit on picnic blankets next to gravesites and eat the favorite food of their loved ones. To make the ritual more Christian, the Spaniards moved it so it coincided with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day (Nov. 1 and 2), which is when it is celebrated today.

The exhibition will be open to the public each Sunday from 11am to 12 pm and by appointment during the week.

Appointments can be made by contacting the fellowship at 334-501-8621 or E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , the minister, Rev. Diana Allende