Through Wednesday, November 20
Cornell College's Peter Paul Luce Gallery, 600 First Street West, Mt. Vernon IA
With its creator a noted artist and instructor based in Chicago, the fascinating exhibition Evergreen will be on display at Cornell College's Peter Paul Luce Gallery through November 20, with painter Marina Ross employing the visual symbolism of the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz to explore cultural and personal memory, grief, and performance.
After a traumatic personal loss, Ross began to mine the idyllic film to depict her inability to process the impact of the event. The painter uses a softened and muted color palette to suggest a suspension of disbelief, mirroring cinema’s ability to construct an alternative reality. Using film stills and AI/personal reconstructions, Evergreen's resulting images—often dreamlike, fleeting, or ambiguous—indirectly reference the movie, asking viewers to fill in the gaps with their own memory. In consideration of the legacy and countless remakes of The Wizard of Oz, Ross offers a version of the film as an enduring form of collective memory.
The Chicago-based Ross earned an M.F.A. in painting from the University of Iowa in 2018 after earning a B.F.A. in painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012. Her work has been exhibited in New York at Sugarlift, Friday Studio Gallery, Art Helix, Highline Stages, and throughout Chicago at Goldfinch Gallery, Roman Susan, Heaven Gallery, The Franklin, Sulk, ARTRUSS, and Baby Blue Gallery, among others.
She has received grant funding from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Projects (DCASE) in Chicago, the Illinois Arts Council, Loyola University Chicago, and The Stanley Award for International Graduate Research from the University of Iowa to attend the Saint Petersburg Artist Residency in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Ross' work is also in numerous public and private collections, and she teaches art at Loyola University Chicago.
Evergreen will be on display in Cornell College's Peter Paul Luce Gallery through November 20, and gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. and Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. Admission is free, and for more information, e-mail bcashbaugh@cornellcollege.edu and visit CornellCollege.edu/art/exhibitions/index.shtml.