IN THE STUDIO WITH/Linda Jean Fisher
Sketches and Notes,
And Pieces Take Shape
CIP
By D. DOMINICK LOMBARDI
PEEKSKILL,

For almost a decade, artists have been setting up studios in office buildings, carriage houses, forgotten storefronts and a vacated church - all in downtown Peekskill.
Since February 1992, Linda Jean Fisher has had a studio in converted office space in the Flat Iron Building here.
Now she looks forward to the possibility of being chosen for one of the 28 units in Art Loft, a new development a few blocks away, which was specifically designed as living and working space for artists.
Ms. Fisher talked recently about influences on her work - including Peekskill itself.
Q. Looking around your studio, there are numerous drawings, notes, reference materials, scale models and finished works, all systematically designed, and in different stages of completion. What drives you to fabricate such an obsessive and seemingly endless supply of notes, sketches, plans and objects?
A. I think of myself, primarily, as a problem solver. Every aspect of each project that I undertake is carefully and meticulously designed and documented. In 1997, 1 started my current project, "Leonardo's Uterus," which is based on the great master's sketchbook drawing titled "The Infant in the Womb." I started with the figure. The head was created separately, which helped me to finalize the body: a 72-inch tall, sewn-fabric, soft sculpture of an adult male. Now I'm designing and producing a series of paper spheres to represent the uterine form.
Q. Why did you turn Da Vinci's infant into a full-size adult?
A. When I was a child, my father used to tell me stories about the
people who built reinforced metal barrels with the express purpose of riding over Niagara Falls. This fantasy of going over and through the water at Niagara Falls prompted me to think about re-entering my mother's womb, to a peaceful place, where I could look out at life through an imagined window: a viewing portal at my mother's belly button. This led me to create the life-size figure, an adult encased within a protective sphere that could experience life in a totally safe environment.
Q. Is it safe to say that your art is a never-ending, seamless process from one idea to the next?
A.*There is always overlap. The ideas come constantly. A good friend of mine said about me, When I think of something and I get scared, I know I am on to something. I want a project that will make me stretch my mind or my thoughts. What I choose to do has to challenge my ability to conceive of and fabricate objects. Once the challenge is gone, then I find something new.
Q. About 100 artists are living and working in Peekskill. Why did you move here?
A. I was prompted to come here by an article given to me by a friend. The article stated that Peekskill had a burgeoning artists' colony. I think there were about 50 artists in Peekskill at that time, and I saw it as a logical and a progressive move for me. I wanted to be around other artists. It's easier to share information about grants or exhibition opportunities when you have a community around you with shared concerns.
Q. What is it about Peekskill that you like?
A. Peekskill has some of the area's most interesting architecture. I can walk across the street to the Paramount and see a live concert and a rare movie. The restaurants and shops are innovative, and the river views are stunning. I can walk to the
train from here. I also Re Peekskill because it is a culturally diverse community. I like the blend of ideas and ideologies.
Q. Earlier, you talked about a deeper connection to the area. Can you expand on that?
A. Working here connects me with
the lives of my mother and grandmother. They both worked in Peekskill.
My mother worked at the Paramount as a teenager, and my grandmother worked in the five and dime around the comer. She's 91, and she still lives in Peekskill.

RECORD REVIEW
Friday, October 2, 1998

ART REVIEW
'The Persistence of Memory'
By D. DOMINICK LOMBARDI
"The Persistence of Memory" is the title of one of Salvador Dalis most notable works - a title now appropriate to describe the recent trend in many of our area's exhibitions that stress the influence of memory, personal or collective, on the artistic process. This is not to say that all of the art in these exhibits looks the same, or that all of the curators or jurors end up in the same place with similar looking shows. What is troubling is that there are not enough fresh curatorial ideas to bring in the bulk of the outside world into these showplaces.
The Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill has done a good job constructing their Upper Gallery space - a well-maintained hallway/gallery area. However, they have yet to reach their full potential. Given the odd layout of the gallery, one might focus on quirkier ideas. Say for instance, an exhibit that included assemblages that incorporate electrical lights, which would parallel the Paramount's recent history in restoring its marquis to its original grandeur. The simplest way to create enough outlets for such a project would be to install socket or outlet adaptors into each of the gallery's existing track lights. Then the exhibiting artist would have enough power sources to turn the gallery into a funky, cavernous field filled with artificially and oddly lit assemblages that, in effect, challenge the space. It may also benefit future curators to look at pictures of Kenny Scharfs "Closet" installations that first appeared in 1980s East Village venues such as the Fun Gallery, whereby Mr. Scharf changed the visual dimensions of each space by hyper-filling it with crazy, iridescent or Day-Glo art.
With all this said, the organizer/juror of this exhibition, Marcy B. Freedman, did well with what was submitted. One of the 19 artists in the show, the sculptor Linda jean Fisher, who I first met at The Westchester Biennial, continues to prove herself as one of our county's best artists. Her lone entry, "The Night My Bed Turned Into An Iron Lung And Grew Wings" (1994), is clearly this exhibits centerpiece. A miniature bed made primarily of black rubber, sprouts insanely heavy, albeit uplifting wings. A heavy-duty bungee cord commonly used to fasten refrigerators to their carts, holds a pair of chains which support the wings. This combination of a powerful strap and chains simulates the function of a thor,;.x, only here, this chest is missing a ileart signifying the dilemma facing most serious artists
who faithfully follow their passion in a world where most never look past the surface.
Susan Christensorfs two black-andwhite photographs %are also well-conceived and intriguing. Both are of a woman, perhaps an older woman who has had a bit of trouble sleeping of late. The first image is a detail of her hands. Her left hand is seen at an odd angle which accentuates her bony knuckles, making her look arthritic and frail. Her right hand is seen as a silhouette, out of focus and reaching toward a night table that is more or less off the picture plane - perhaps she is searching for sleeping pills or pain relief. In the second image, we see a hand massaging a foot that is cramping or tired. Both photos are shot from a low angle, utilizing only the ambient light of the night table's lamp. This low view approximates the height of an adjacent bed, which suggests the view of a freshly awakened, fuzzy-eyed soul on a parallel bed.
Roxanna Mekndez offers up this exhibit's most intriguing piece, a painting of a funeral procession titled, "El Entierro de Don Tito" (1997). Ms. MeIendez succeeds because she is honest and unpretentious. For instance, she takes great pains to carefully paint each of the mourners' faces; their eyes, nose and mouth differently, which shows tremendous discipline. Then, despite all the care taken to make each person unique, she absurdly brings the sky color down, way down, below the preexisting horizon line. She naively usesthe sky's blue as a filler between the main tree's branches, or between two of the figures in the back row which in some strange way, seems right. This painting was derived from a photograph, a posed scene where all of the participants were looking up at 'he photographer who, judging by the vantage point of the painting, is probably standing on the bed of a pickup truck.
Terry E. Boddie's two black-andwhite layered, multi-image photographs are closest to the exhibition's theme, whereby art has the "ability to evoke, in some manner, the synthetic nature of memory" as stated in the catalog essay.
"Separation" (1997) depicts four children, one of whom is represented by a ghostly figure. A layer of palm leaves clouds the vision a bit, and a third image - a map of Nevis where the artist was born - marks the location. Mr. Boddie manipulates the surface of his art with delicately painted black lines, especially around the cloth-like base of the f~tnt figure. This ha*n~-.vork amplifies the subtle cracks that dot the surface of the print, adding timelessness to the work. The imagerv: The four children, the ambient folw'e and the map connect early childhoozDd memories to an abrupt change, clearl\ demonstrating loss and despair.
"Remembrance of Things Past: Memory Into Art" will run through Nov. 13. For more information on this, or any of the Paramount's exhibitions, movies or live events, please call 7392333. The Paramount Center for the Arts is located in Peekskill, at 1008 Brown Street.
RECORD REVIEW
Friday, October 2, 1998
/Pages 15-16

The Star

Friday, December 1, 2000
Linda Jean Fisher on the ride of her life
By Eve Marx
You could say Peekskill-studio artist Linda Jean Fisher is a bit of a mad scientist She calls her studio a work _
laboratory and certainly her is experimental. There's a brush of Dr. Frankenstein7s genius running inside her as she assembles and constructs and deconstructs objects and ideas, moving them around =11 they are something else altoge er.
She's a painter and a collage artist and she's no dummy with'hand tools. (She gets that from her dad, who was a tool-and-die guy of the old school, she said).
An electronic typewriter is indigenous to her work. She's a writer, she's a poet, she's a wizard with a miter box. She says she revels in structural mayhem.
In other words, LindaJean Fisheris a one of a kind gal.
"My work and I are traveling Wgether by car on an endless journey," Fisher writes in her artist's statement. "In the beginning I wanted to be in control. Then I realized this was unfair. So I pulled over and we both got out and changed seats. Now my work is doing the driving and I'm on the ride of my life."
Fisher describes herself as selftaught, even though she holds degrees fromWestchester Corrummity College in Valhalla and The School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she received a BFA in painting.
. Her work has been exhibited for four years in wide-ranging venues like the SPACES gallery in Cleveland, the Subculture Gallery in Philadelphia, The Bronx Museum of the Arts and numerous galleries in Peekskill - the Flat Iron Gallery, the Bywood Gallery and the Paramount Center for the Arts.
She is a recipient of the Bronx Museum of the Arts "Artist in the Marketplace" award and her~work :has been reviewed on several occasians in the New York Times.
'In a phone interview from her home in Montrose which she shares with her mom the artist talked candidly about her studio fife. She said she abandoned painting in 1993 to pursue the collage work she now, calls assemblage, a three-dimensional concept to art that can't be hung up on a wall.
It started with the deconstruction of dollhouse furniture which she then recustornized with neoprene sheeting and rubber strips, leading one an critic to dub her a furniture bondage queen.
I When she tired of playing with other people's stuff, she turned her attention to an alweather chariot - "It's ready for solid precipitation,. she said - before moving on to thework that compels her now, the~ human body, particularly focused on the womb.
"Leonardo da Vinci had a horse," the artist said with fervor. "John Roebling had a bridge. (the Brooklyn Bridge.) I have the uterus."
1995 was a pivotal year for Fisher, beginning with a house sittingjob for sculptor Carla Rae Johnson.
"She taught me how to use a table saw," Fisher said. Free from the restrictioma-of-creating base foundati ons with a rniter box, she threw herself into new w6rk that was all learnmg by doing. "And looking," she added.
Her projects are inspiredby what she absorbs from visual art, the history of science and the powernf invention. She is on the cutting edge of new art, constructing inventions such as a suction unit that draws fiquid albumen from a chicken egg, a submarine that is propelled by the pulsating rhythm of its own blood and fanciful productions utilizing rubber sheeting, vinyl, linen, automobile parts and plumbing fittings.
She was commissioned to make a vinyl and neoprene suit of armor featured in the Philadelphia Arts Bank.
"My approach to art making is ritualistic and methodical. I respect the process," Fisher said. -
She is spiritual. She speaks less conversationally than in proclarnations. "If I turn my work to a power other than myself it grows," she said.
A recent collaboration with writer Beverly Army Gillen- produced a work of graphite on mylar entitled, "Prayer of a Girl Estranged from her Church."
Her work is labor intensive and a physical challenge. She might start work at 9 a.m. and not stop until 9 p.m. She may spend as many as 12 hours on her feet at a time in her studio, not to mention the time given nver in her dnv inh which iq f~ming
atThe Art Barn in Ossining where she compresses a 40-plus hour work week into threedays. Time management is always a focus.
When she gets in her studio she's transported into the sturm und drang of the work completely absorbed in the process even when it means exploring many paths. like a true scientist, she respects the process of repeated trials and exper
imentations.
"If one plan won't work, another must," she said, ultimately describing ajoumey-as-destination image of "intensive little waterways feeding into one big river." She holds in her mind two visions, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Rose Centerfor Earth and Space in the Haydn Planetarium.
"It's the uterus that landed on West 81st Street" she quipped.

THE PLAIN DEALER

FRIDAY, MARCH 14,1997
Disturbing, provocative views of the mundane
By STEVEN LITT

Never underestimate the power of mundane objects to roil the darker recesses of the mind. That's the me - sage of " Obsessions," a disturbing, provocative and occasionally entertaining exhibition that often seems to cackle with twisted laughter at Spaces.
The show, organized by the in-house exhibition cominittee at Spaces. focuses on five young artists from across the United States whose work deals with fetishism, macabre mystery, and strange, repetitive behaviors.
The strategies they employ come as no surprise- "i
Marcel Duchanip, some artists try to produce rocut!,el electricity simply by placing found objects in the gallery context with a provocative label.
, 11, is is the case with Peter Huttinger of Cincinnati, whose installation consists of plastic thimbles, toilel plu ogers, a plaster cast of a finger, an atomizer and other commonplace objects, displayed on shelves.
By calling these objects "Sex Machines," Huttinger hints archly at strange practices. He also suggests that some notions of eroticism lie mainly within the mind. He has a point, but his work doesn't take it very far.
The work of Chicago artist Joel Ross offers a more creative and disturbing twist on the idea of the found object. In a series of tiny collages, Ross has obsessively clipped photographs of human arms out of magazines and taped them to tiny panels. By suggesting an unnatural interest in a certain portion of anatomy, the work cleverly parodies more well-known fetishes.
More unsettling is a series of neatly constructed plywood boxes by Ross, stacked and labeled with the name "Tracy." Only after a few moments do you realize that the boxes are perfectly sized to hold a head, two arms, two legs and a torso. Realizing this is like experiencing the frisson of horror in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Win
ART REVIEW
Spaces
dow," when a photographer played by James Stewart begins to suspect that a neighbor is a murderer.
Goads to curiosity
Using concealment and containment as goads to curiosity and imagination is a standard strategy of Surrealist art. It surfaces in the wrapped buildings of Christo and the tiny boxed tableaux ofJoseph Cornel
Ross uses the technique well in "Chair in I %velve Jars," in which he has hacked a chair to bits and placed the remains in 12 large mason jars. By virtually running a commonplace object through a blender and preserving its remnants, Ross creates a restrained image of violence that is all the more disturbing for looking so neat and tidy. It's as if grandma had gone wild with a chainsaw and started canning the living room furniture ratherthan strawberry preserves.
The same sense of normalcy deposed permeates the strange art ofJohn Salvest of State University, Ark. Salvest obsessively collects and displays items of daily use, from newspapers to cotton swabs, and then displays 1 them as carefully packaged art objects. The results can
be visually commanding.

ART REVIEW
Spaces

Using concealment and containment as goads to curiosity and imagination is a standard strategy of Surrealist art. It surfaces in the wrapped buildings of Christo and the tiny boxed tableaux ofJoseph Cornell.
Ross uses the technique well in "Chair in Twelve Jars," in which he has hacked a chair to bits and placed
the remains in 12 large mason jars. By virtually running a commonplace object through a blender and preserving its remnants, Ross creates a restrained image of violence that is all the more disturbing for looking so neat and tidy. It's as if grandma had gone wild with a chainsaw and started canning the living room furniture rather than strawberry preserves.
The same sense of normalcy deposed permeates the strange art ofJohn Salvest ofState University, Ark. Salvest obsessively collects and displays items ofdaily use, from newspapers to cotton swabs, and then displays them as carefully packaged art objects. The results can be visually commanding.
His wall-size installation of used coffee filters, displayed in a bi Ilboard-size arrangement, certa I nly gp is your attention.
B it the work raises banality to new h eights and smacks of small ideas writ large- Salvest also has a tende-cy to embrace the sophomoric one-liner, as in his year's worth of neatly stacked newspapers, which he calls "Newspaper Column . Get it,
Susan White of Boston, Alass., brings a fine sense of outrage to a series of strange-looking sculptural tools that evoke social and psychological violence in contemporary life.
White's painful looking "Tools for Interpersonal Communication," displayed in a velvet-lined valise, took like tools for interpersonal torture. Her "Brands" are large implements for branding humans with coded numbers from the standard psychiatric texts, which refer to particu lar mental illnesses. By conn a ting the image of the brand with medical diagnosis, White stages a protest against the bureaucra ti c classification of human behavior.
In her constructions of black rubber and metal, Linda Jean Fisher of Peekskill, N.Y_, comes closest to evoking the imagery of sadomasochistic fetishism. This may seem risque for a general interest art gallery, but such irriagery has been emerging everywhere in mass culture, from 'he ~ash;,ons of Karl Lagerfeld to the in us I c % ideas of Madonna.
Fisher's sculptures, including rubber helmets and furniture, seem to evoke the leather and studs look. But the work doesn't
so much celebrate S&M as poke fun at it. "Nervous Laughter," a black rubber helmet topped with a tuning fork, looks like a device to tune the mind of the wearer to a higher pitch, not to dominate.
"Desire Brute Desire," is a rubber-wrapped viewing contraption in which viewers can see a tiny image of gears in a 19thcentury factory. The suggestion, perhaps, is that in contemporary culture desire is manufactured on an industrial scale. Of course it is. Advertising is meant to create and manipulate all sorts of appetites.
Fisher, like the other artists in the show at Spaces, has given provocative form to aspects of contemporary culture that are stranger than these . might seem at first.
"Obsessions" on view at
Spaces, 2220 Superior Viaduct,
Cleveland.