The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Ceres Project Room #306 323 West 39th Street (between 8th & 9th Avenues) New York, NY What if Emily Dickinson met Marcel Duchamp? What if Hildegard of Bingen met Herman Melville? With wit and just a bit of mischief, sculptor Carla Rae Johnson answers these questions by bringing together her favorite creative souls (who never met each other in life) to watch the sparks fly! Each installation in The Sdance Series (a work in progress) includes drawings and a sculptural "tableau." The drawings are translucent images in pencil on vellum illuminating conversations that can only take place in the imagination. The sculptures, meticulously crafted in wood, provide the furniture and recreation for these unlikely pairings. Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century nun who created art, music and writings that originated in her religious visions, and Herman Melville, the w1iter best known for his masterwork Moby Dick in which he charts a spiritual course in defiance of religious tradition, play parallel word games on a medieval lectern. They share a porous boat perched precariously on a wave of letter tiles. The 19th century poet Emily Dickinson, who referred to herself as a 'loaded gun', and whose reputation as a shy recluse belied the power and defiance of her poems, and Marcel Duchamp, the 20 th century artist and master of chess who delighted in staying several "moves" ahead of the avant- gardes, engage in a game of chess. The only 'piece?' ... Emily's 'loaded gun.' Other installations by Carla Rae Johnson have included: Grey Matters: The Last Library (1990), Spirit and Substance: Sculptural Lecterns and the Spoken Word (1994), and The Last Chance Salon: Games for the Millennium (1997). Since 1985, Ms. Johnson has had ten solo exhibitions in the New York metropolitan area. Reviews and notices of her work have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Journal News, The Times Heralg-Record, and The New Haven Register. Her bio appears in Who's Who in American Art and A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes. She is the 1990 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Ms. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Art at Marymount College in Tarrytown, NY. This project was partially funded by the former New York City Chapter of the Women's Caucus for Art.