Re-Forming Space

Exhibition at Paragraph Gallery, Kansas City, Mo.
With architectural historian, Cydney Millstein
June 20-July 19, 2008

(excerpt from exhibition text by Kate Hackman)

About Re-Forming Space:

In Re-Forming Space, Kansas City artist Susan White and architectural historian Cydney Millstein turn their attention to several Kansas City bridges that represent triumphs of American civil engineering – and feats of great beauty as well.

'On a personal scale we experience bridges from afar as three-dimensional drawings, and in an immediate way, as sculptural forms through which we pass. Indeed, bridges have a way of transforming or re-forming space,' write White and Millstein. Merging the practices and expertise of the two collaborators, the exhibition features a series of new artworks by White, including graphite drawings on vellum, pyrographs (burn drawings) on paper, and two large-scale wall drawings/installations, a sculpture/model and video. It also includes narrative wall texts and a digital presentation by Millstein that lends historic, architectural, engineering and real-world context to the specific bridges White addresses in her artworks...the bridges explored in this exhibition include the Broadway Bridge, the Twelfth Street Trafficway Viaduct, the ASB Bridge, the Paseo Bridge and the Waddell "A" Truss Bridge. These featured bridges were designed by the eminent engineer John Alexander Low Waddell (1854-1938) and his successor firms including (but not limited to) Waddell and Hedrick; Waddell & Harrington; and Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendoff (HNTB).