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1701 North State Street Jackson, MS 39210-0001 (800)352-1050 (601)974-1000
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Associate Professor of Art and Chair of the Art Department
Areas of Specialty: Printmaking, Book Arts, Painting & Drawing
Education: B.F.A. Alfred University; M.F.A. Louisiana State University
Artist Sandra Murchison's work provides a tangible connection to history by examining how America remembers its past. By utilizing rubbings from historic sites, her body of work becomes a trail of clues offering glimpses into forgotten communities. Most recently, she has focused her efforts on the legendary blues musicians of the Mississippi Delta.
"I am a fan of Blues music but my interest in the Mississippi Blues Trail really has more to do with honoring a rare place, period of time and its people - that which makes up the Delta," Murchison said.
In 2009, Murchison received a faculty development grant to focus on the Delta region of the Mississippi Blues Trail. For Murchison, the 30 or so markers in the Mississippi Delta represent new layers of history and narrative that can be formed in a multi-layered piece of art. So far her project has led her to visit a variety of places like Willie "Po' Monkey" Seaberry's old-juke house in Boliver County and Dockery Plantation outside of Cleveland.
"This project focuses specifically on the way that Mississippi aims to construct a specific past and identity rooted in music. The work that I will project is not the stereotypical charming images of iconic musicians," Murchison said. "Instead, I am focused on how we memorialize a culture and I question the effectiveness of these markers. Is the trail too little, too late, or exactly what has been needed for some time?"
From the impressions that she makes of each marker, Murchison produces two- and three-dimensional works by using either mixed media pieces on mounted hardboard surfaces, shaped etchings on sewn paper or prints which have been folded and sewn into sculptural forms.
"We tend to pay attention to souvenir shops and flashy store front displays, whereas the type of cultural history that we can find on historical markers can so easily be skipped over as we speed by them in our cars. My work aims to reverse our experiences with ever-present disposability and fleeting permanence by re-layering images, texts, forms, and narratives," Murchison said.
Her work was recently on display: at the Millsaps Lewis Art Gallery in January 2010, at the Fischer Galleries in Jackson in March 2010 and at Loyola University's Art Gallery in New Orleans in the summer of 2010.
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Millsaps faculty member Sandra Murchinson with Willie "Po' Monkey" Seaberry in Boliver County
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