Penn State Altoona to exhibit artwork by Jeanne Ciravolo

ALTOONA, Pa. - "Testimonial," a body of work by Ivyside Juried Exhibition winner Jeanne Ciravolo, will be on display Sept. 25 through Oct. 16 in the McLanahan Gallery of the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

"Testimonial" honors the complex histories of the artist's close female relative through collage, print, and transfer as acts of physical and psychological construction. Through patching and decoupage, gestures associated with women's labor and craft, Ciravolo pursues artmaking as an act of re-envisioning and rebuilding. "Each textile comes with a history-stains, tears, burns, bleach marks-which informs my alterations. I stitch or collage fragments of narrative into the fabrics that allude to illness, failure, aspiration, and fantasy. My interventions combine with the textiles' existing traits to locate and magnify the stories of my women protagonists."

Ciravolo is an assistant professor in residence and director of the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at the University of Connecticut. She has exhibited her work at Hudson Valley MOCA, Yellowstone Art Museum, Coral Springs Museum, The New Britain Museum of American Art, and The Butler Museum of American Art among others. Her work has also appeared in publications such as "Art Spiel," "Create Magazine," and "Rejoinder," a publication of the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University in partnership with the Feminist Art Project.

The galleries are open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. For further information, call the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts at 814-949-5452.