On display in the Sloan Fine Arts Building as part of Cheryl Harper's satirical

* Note: The views of the artist do not necessarily reflect the views of Lock Haven University.

LOCK HAVEN, Pa. – Vance McCoy, associate professor of the arts at Lock Haven University, is responsible for determining many of the university’s visiting artists.

His latest exhibiting selection at LHU is Cheryl Harper, whose work he spotted among other Philadelphia artists. McCoy explained that Harper’s work jumped out at him, and he knew what lessons he could teach his students to go along with her visit.

“I saw it as a way to show my kids that (pottery and ceramics) do not have to be just decorative, but can have political and social concept behind it as well,” said McCoy.

Additionally, Harper was not educated in the medium in which she was working, which adds another element to McCoy’s classroom message.

“I tell student artists that they should be able to work in all mediums,” said McCoy.

McCoy found the art interesting and worthwhile because it’s “topical.”

“She’s making commentary on what is happening in the news,” McCoy explained. “It’s aesthetically compelling, interesting to look at and makes you want to engage it.”

Harper has created a political chronicle, satire and commentary without a mark of ink.

Instead, the latest artist to grace the lobby of the Lock Haven University Sloan Fine Arts Center is documenting politics and current events through sculpture, ceramics and mixed media with her “Dirty Politics” exhibit.

Through colorful and provocative work, Harper brings current icons and issues of the public sphere into a surreal, satirical landscape.

Harper is trained as an art historian and curator as well as printmaker and painter, though her newest exhibit extends well into the world of clay and ceramics where she enjoys the “tactile experience” of different mediums.

Her work has appeared in numerous regional and national juried art exhibitions, and she has received many awards and grants as a result.

The current Sloan exhibit opened on Nov. 7 will be on display until Dec. 1.

Unmistakable political icons take strange new forms in Harper’s “Dirty Politics.”

Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Rodham-Clinton stand beside one another in the form of colorful sphinxes. The ancient symbol of respect and power is morphed into something resembling a blend of hallowed reverence and pop art.

Harper called the sphinxes tributes to these influential females.

And though the art itself demonstrates Harper’s negative feelings concerning the current administration, respectable depictions of the secretary of state can be seen in a number of works.

“I really like Condoleezza Rice,” said Harper. “She’s a woman with power who is not taken seriously by many of her peers and subordinates. She reminds me of a mix of Madeline Albright and Jacqueline Onassis.”

Women take a dominant role in Harper’s work, though not always as heroes. In “Mix and Match: Bush Women As Topiary,” Harper attempts to show the notable women, including Rice, Laura Bush and Barbara Bush, in this administration as figures representing little more than a “child’s toy.”

Other sculptures include George Bush seated as a puppet on his father’s lap, administration figures able to fit inside one another as Babushka dolls, and Al Gore as an educator with a divine purpose.

The “Washington Monuments with Reflecting Pool II” brings well-known monuments into contact with what Harper called “incriminating statements” from this administration’s politicians.

“I documented them while they (the quotes) were fresh. They’re pregnant with meaning now,” said Harper, “and in 10 years, (they) will probably have even more significance.”

The meaning inherent in each work of art was never lost on Harper, who explained how she, even as a young woman, searched for a message in her work.

“I was always the one thinking, ‘Why am I creating art?’” said Harper.

Harper’s blunt attitude regarding the necessity of creating art propelled her to begin dabbling with a career as a curator, where she found joy displaying the great works of her peers.

Only generations away from family members, who had suffered through the ugly reality for European Jews around the time of World War II, Harper took the history of the genocide to a personal level, and it became an intense theme for much of her early work.

“The thing I hadn’t yet worked out as a person,” said Harper, “was what I felt about the Holocaust.”

Reading diaries of those trapped inside concentration camps, Harper said she could imagine no other way in which to face the cruelty other than creating art.

“I was a mess,” she said. “It would have destroyed me if I didn’t find a way to understand.”

The solemn theme of some of Harper’s earliest work set the stage for an artist who doesn’t shy from discord, but instead tries to wrap her head, and her art, around it. “Dirty Politics” is an attempt to do just that in terms of current events and political affairs with a medium Harper had never truly studied during her education.

“I always had an interest in 3-D work,” she explained, “but not the means to do it.”

Using her example of moving from printmaking to woodcuts to sculpture and ceramics, Harper advised the audience members never to limit themselves, but rather always try new mediums.

The bottom line, Harper emphasized, is that artists can never escape their calling.

“You are what you are. You have to do it, or else you’ll find yourself in an asylum.”