Diana Farfan: The Dream Life of Broken Toys

The Sumter County Gallery of Art is proud to present the ceramic sculptures and installation works of Diana Farfan. Farfan received her BFA at the National University of Colombia and her MFA in Ceramics at the University of South Carolina.

Diana is known for her surrealistic ceramic toys, marionettes, puppets and dolls. Her pieces illustrate her observations about our ambivalent human condition – manipulated, fragile, impotent, vulnerable, and isolated – countered by the ability to find hope. With her ceramic and mix media figures, she incorporates both classical and contemporary elements to represent the human body and its identity in dysfunctional modern times. Her 2D and 3D works have been shown and awarded in a number of exhibitions in places including Colombia, the US, and Taiwan

Farfan’s Artist Statement:

By working with clay, I have discovered the freedom and happiness that is play – a way of being that we have forgotten. Now I realize that a broken toy is not necessarily an obstacle; rather, it is a possibility for creativity, for imagining new ways of playing. And here I recognize that life is a form of play and I a toy. As such, I play with clay in order to live, to create, to build, and also to repair my own dreams and the dreams of others. My transition from Colombia to the United States and my encounter with a different culture is the journey that has allowed me to believe that it’s possible to create and live in a world of magical realism.

Jody Servon & Lorene Delany-Ullman: Saved

The Sumter County Gallery of Art is also proud to present the work of Jody Servon & Lorene Delany-Ullman. Saved is an ongoing photographic and poetic exploration of the human experience of life, death, and memory, addressing how memories of the dead are deeply rooted in everyday objects, and how those objects serve as the means to convey those memories to the living. The work is candid and direct in its approach to a topic Americans often avoid talking about even though it is an experience we all inevitably share: the death of a loved one.  Prose poems, written by Lorene Delany-Ullman accompany each photograph in the series.

Jody Servon’s personal projects include installations, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and video. Her work has appeared in exhibitions, screenings and as public projects in the US, Canada and China. Servon has a master’s degree in fine art from the University of Arizona and a bachelor’s degree in visual art from Rutgers University in New Jersey. Lorene Delany-Ullman is a native Californian, and received her M.F.A. in English from the University of California, Irvine. Her book of prose poems, Camouflage for the Neighborhood, won the 2011 Sentence Award, and is forthcoming from Firewheel Editions in Summer 2012. Her poems have been included in recent anthologies such as Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease (Kent State University Press, 2009) and Alternatives to Surrender (Plain View Press, 2007). She currently teaches composition at UC Irvine.