Wellesley offers unique sculptural perspective

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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter

Wellesley College offers an astounding collection of artistic works to be experienced. Much of these collections are housed in the Davis Museum, which hosts exhibits from the Medici Painter Carlo Dolci to exploring the beginning of the Bauhaus aesthetic in America.

The Davis, however, is not where art ends on the Wellesley campus.

All around campus, hidden artistic gems can be found. One of the more recent gems was Sarah Tortora’s “Fickle Ground,” a sculptural exhibit found within the Jewett Art Center. Supported by the Alice C. Cole ’42 Art Fund, Tortora was the 2015-2016 Alice C. Cole Fellow.

“Fickle Ground” explores “the authority of longevity present in classical forms of friezes, columns, and steeles, and relegating their imposing militarism to the surface, like a Potemkin village. These works accept the premise that every equestrian monument has inevitably become a Trojan horse, and by passively consuming sculptural archetypes we passively place precedence on postured narratives of history.”

Tortora received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and has had residencies all over the country, including Wyoming, New Hampshire, New York, and soon, Michigan. She has also exhibited previously at Williams College and Bloomsburg University.