Exhibit Details

October 27 - December 8, 2000

The material presented in this exhibition, and the exhibition in the Pollock Gallery is but a very small portion of the artwork Linda Finnell produced during her lifetime of making. Finnell’s creative nature emerged at age ten in the form of complex diaries and stories. Remarkable for their content and form, many of these early works were made public here for the first time. As with many artists, Finnell was largely a private person with a public persona. Unlike most artists however, her range of creative output covered a vast array of images, things, and mediums. In concert with the Pollock Gallery exhibition of prints and photography, these two shows cover an immense terrain of creativity. What really lodges in the mind of the beholder of Finnell’s efforts is the sheer beauty of it all. Finnell’s lifelong habit of keeping diaries may provide an important clue to understanding her need for beauty. The chronology presented here begins with Finnell’s diaries at age ten as a young girl and ends forty years later with her late diaries created near the brink of death from cancer. Diaries and journals are memory. Finnell understood perhaps better than most of us Milan Kundera’s words, "Imposing form on a period of time is what beauty demands, but so does memory."

The curators of the exhibit in the Hawn Gallery were Debora Hunter, Frances Bagley, and Julie Cohn.

The companion exhibit to the display in the Hawn Gallery was entitled: Linda Finnell [1948-1999] Sometimes My Hand Has a Mind of Its Own: Prints & Photography. It was displayed October 27 - November 9, 2000 in the Pollock Gallery located in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center.