The Corpses - Discipline, 2023
12 x 11 in.
Leather tassel, matchbox, and plastic netting on paint-stained paper towel on paper on cardboard
— The Venus Victrix on a souvenir matchbox from Rome's Borghese Gallery takes on a different tone when joined with a cut-up leather tassel and tightly wrapped and knotted netting meant to protect a wine bottle —
The Corpses - Dark Matter, 2023
10.5 x 8.5 in.
Mixed media and found objects on paper on cardboard
— A dismembered calculator and a found red plastic donkey kicking up its heels in a puddle of paint converge with text to create a merrily ominous mood —
The Corpses - What Remains?, 2023
11 x 8.5 in.
Mixed media, broken china, fabric, and stamped napkin on paper on cardboard
— A cocktail napkin stamped "For Deposit Only" gets a metaphorical boost from shards of a broken vintage pitcher, a piece of cut patterned fabric, and golden brushstrokes on the verso of a painting on paper —
The Corpses - Games of Chance, 2018
12 x 9 in.
Found objects, marbles, fabric, and mixed media on framed blackboard
— Measuring cups and a paper cup become tools of a losing game (two of the vessels are bottomless), as a handkerchief waves farewell —
The Corpses - Horse Latitudes, 2018
Plastic horse, mixed media, tape, and poem on paper
— Accidental dog pawprints and a broken but still forward-looking horse tread a found ink wash painting on paper, overseen by Emily Dickinson's "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - “ —
Bell and Ganassi
THE CORPSES
Laura Bell, a painter based in the Bronx, and Ian Ganassi, a poet in New Haven, met as artists in residence at the Millay Colony. In 2005, they began mailing between them the ongoing collaborative collage series “The Corpses” (the series title refers to the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse). The collaboration began with an unfinished poem and handwritten phrases on a piece of printer paper stained with coffee rings that Ganassi mailed to Bell. With each mailing, the works evolve, and new pieces are started. Both can call a piece finished; some go back and forth multiple times, and others make only one circuit. Politics, pop culture, religion, and literature make appearances. Gathering materials has become a consuming habit, combining found objects, text, drawings, ads, photos, fabrics, and mixed media—a painterly, visceral process, the anti-Photoshop. “The Corpses turned us into scavengers,” says Ganassi. “We ended up trying to get the whole world into them.” The series has evolved into a decade of personal and material call-and-response, with a new batch usually in progress or transit.
BIO
LAURA BELL
At Douglass College, Rutgers University, Laura studied with Fluxus artist Robert Watts, who gave her a deep appreciation for the spontaneous and serendipitous, and with clay sculptor Ka Kwong Hui, whose sense of the relationships of forms went far beyond the ceramic studio. She received a 2020 Bronx Recognizes Its Painting grant from the Bronx Council for the Arts. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Millay Colony and has participated in the Governors Island and numerous art fairs. Her paintings and mixed-media work have been shown in New York, Provincetown, New Haven, Philadelphia, Berlin, Miami Beach, and elsewhere. She lives and works in New York.
IAN GANASSI
Ian Ganassi has worked as a writer, teacher, and percussionist. His poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Home Planet News, Meniscus, Offcourse Literary, BlazeVOX, Clockwise Cat, Past Simple, Otoliths, The Yale Review, MadHat Annual, and New American Writing. His poem Blunt Trauma was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his translations from Virgil’s Aeneid have appeared in New England Review. His first poetry collection, Mean Numbers, was published by China Grove in 2016; his second poetry collection, True for the Moment, is forthcoming from WordTech Press in June. A third collection, By This Time, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2024. Ian is a long-time resident of New Haven, Connecticut.