Works by Rebecca Muller and Mercedes Sicilia
July 22-August 31, 2025
It All Begins with Matter
Rebecca Muller explores image/presence-making though the uses of matter. These pieces begin with bits of debris, organic and inorganic that have slight line, mass, weight in space. Found artifacts, reflecting the natural cycle of decay, or the eroding process of human discard, are laid on a polymer plate, exposed to UV light — making their mark on paper. A thing moving, emerging into other form until it, too, dissolves.
The images come from a place not-knowing. They are the stuff by which to sort out being in this life-time. A re-membering – over and over again. They are shards of experience, glimpses of bodies’ states; conditions of being in this moment and this one and this one. They are hieroglyphs, codices, unfolding in and across space and time.
During her mentorship in 2023-2024, Muller worked with Meredith Broberg as her mentor, who opened up a sensitivity to the visual mechanics of shifting back and forth between a world of 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional relationships. Nancy Diessner invited broad exploration into open bite, and the infinite possibilities of composing plates with a vast array of materials. Joyce Silverstone offered her keen eye and reflective conversation sensing what was ‘there.’
The two images flanking the flat file are part of a series entitled: Matterly Manifestations and were done during the mentorship. The subsequent images are part of a continuing series titled: Frail Structures that explore sequential image-making using multiple plates and layering.
Marks, form, movement becoming Word and Atmospheric Conditions loosely reflecting our particular conditions – of bodies situated; intersecting in the specific social, political, familial and locations into which we have been flung. Perhaps offering Concantinations that burst into chants, songs that are ballast, a counterpoint to despair as we traverse this rocky terrain of these particular times.
In Gratitude,
Rebecca Muller, Summer, 2025
Sanford Gallery, Zea Mays Printmaking
The Echo of Thickness
Mercedes Sicilia uses physical objects that she scans in a photocopy machine and makes photopolymer etchings of the images. Her works explores the profound connection between objects and human presence, delving into what she calls “lived property” rather than mere private ownership. Inspired by the philosophical distinction between a thing’s “whatness”—its general definition—and its “thisness”—its unique, individual characteristics- her aim is to capture the latter: the unseen narratives and emotional resonance that accumulate around everyday items.
During her mentorship in 2023-2024, she worked with Joyce Silverstone as a mentor and Nancy Diessner on photo polyer etching, during which time she developed the work that explores memory and artifacts left by a beloved family member and presented on the wooden grid frame.
This past year, Sicilia has worked with imaging a variety of familiar objects and both with a scanner and directly placing them on the polymer plates. She has formed these into enclosed ‘boxes’ that include artifacts relating to the images. She invites people to handle the boxes, move, turn, jiggle them to experience the echoes of presence through light sound: objects becoming storytellers.
Mercedes Sicilia, Summer, 2025.
Sanford Gallery, Zea Mays Printmaking,