Author: susanharbagepageblog

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Crossing Over : A Floating Intervention

Crossing Over – A Floating Intervention
Art at the International Bridge
Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico
May 24, 2009

Artist Susan Harbage Page sponsored by Galeria 409 of Brownsville, Texas held a community art intervention/happening using children’s inner tubes to make a floating bridge between Mexico and the United States in protest of the border wall scheduled to be built in downtown Brownsville. Community members on both sides of the International Bridge between Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico inflated inner tubes and tied them together end to end to form the bridge. Harbage Page swam a line of inner tubes to the middle of the Rio Grande from the Mexican side of the river where she was met by David Freeman with a line of inner tubes from the U.S. side. She symbolically tied them together linking both sides of the border.

Participants also set up a Welcome Station for immigrants swimming across the border with running and swimming trophies and medals to commemorate the illegal crossings that take place in the area. Part of the event was a reclamation of borderlands along the river which traditionally are used only by members of the Border Patrol but could be the site of recreational areas such as River walks in San Antonio, Texas and Wilmington, North Carolina. A photograph of an earlier boardwalk in Brownsville can be found at the Historic Brownsville Museum.

Thanks to everyone who participated especially Betty Clark, Mark Clark, David Freeman, Lee Basham.

Special thanks to David Freeman for sharing his photos of the event. Photos below were made by David Freeman and Susan Harbage Page.








































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Gibbes courageously reveals itself in Prop Master

More press on the Prop Master Exhibition



Charleston City Paper – The Gibbes courageously reveals itself in Prop Master: Brave New World by Laura Stokes
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/the-gibbes-courageously-reveals-itself-in-prop-master/Content?oid=1186881

Post and Courier, Charleston, South Carolina – ‘Prop Master’ Unexpected installation changes views of race, class, gender, and sexual identity by Adam Parker
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/may/10/prop_master81652/

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New Print Edition – Charleston Portraits

Along with the new Prop Master Installation at the Gibbes Museum in Charleston I have created a new series of Archival Digital Prints.

Specs: Hanehmule Paper, 13.5 inches high by 11 inches wide with a deckled edge on the bottom, image size is 7 inches high by about 4 inches wide depending on the image, edition size is 35.

If you would like prices or more info you can email me at susanharbagepage@gmail.com

Here are the images:

Charleston Portrait No. 1

Charleston Portrait No. 2

Charleston Portrait No. 3

Charleston Portrait No. 4

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Good Words

Some good words from Jerry Cullum about the Changing Room Exhibition at Hagedorn Foundation Gallery in Atlanta.

And of course, Susan Harbage Page is a known quantity of considerable distinction whose gender reversal of Andres Serrano’s famous Klan portraits raises a whole set of subsequent issues through their allusions to female veiling and to the secret-society performance costumes from whom she lets us know the Klan took the shape of their headgear:

http://www.counterforces.blogspot.com/

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Myers Park High School Project

I’m working on a new project with students at Myers Park High School in Charlotte, North Carolina. The project is a collaboration with the McColl Center for Visual Arts, Charlotte and is funded by the McColl Center and the Arts Teach Foundation. Students responded to the idea of “What it mens to be Green?” and made pinhole cameras out of recycled objects. Lisa Holder the photography teacher at Myers Park and Devlin McNeil and Angela Grauel from the McColl Center have been wonderful collaborators. Here are a few images of the students with cameras. I’ll post more images of our tree wrapping installation later.

Joseph Alter with Loaf of Bread Camera

Yoo Hwa Jang with Baby Shoe Camera

Corey Ring with Wooden Box Camera

Emily Johnson with Plastic Pumpkin Camera

David Harwood with Shoe Camera

Lindsay Albright with Plastic Cup Camera and Silver Box Camera

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Two Talks


The Carolina and Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
is pleased to present its annual conference:
The Idea of the Americas: Representation and Reality
February 13-14, 2009

Longing: Personal Effects from the Border
Keynote presentation by Susan Harbage Page
February 14, 11:15am, Fed Ex Global Center, UNC Campus

Tell About the South: Lunchtime Conversation at the Center for the Study of the American South.
February 25, 2009
Susan Harbage Page, Lecturer, Department of Art
“Signs of a Struggle: PErsonal Effects from the Border”
Susan Harbage Page explores the complex topic of the border through photography. In 2007 and 2008 she walked the border near Brownsville, Texas photographing and collecting personal effects such as toothbrushes, wallets, identity cards and clothing abandoned by illegal immigrants crossing the U.S. – Mexican border near Brownsville, Texas.
Seating is limited, and reservations will be accepted in the order received:
CSAS@unc.edu 919.962.0503
All sessions will be held from 12:00 to 1:00 P.M. in the meeting room at the Love House and Hutchins Forum, home of the Center for the Study of the American South, 410 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill.
Lunch will be served.