‘Madonna Comix’ on display at Western Gallery through Nov. 22

“Madonna Comix” is the culmination of a collaboration that began in 2009 when poet Celia Bland encountered the work of visual artist Dianne Kornberg at the Chicago Cultural Center; the works will show at the Western Gallery on the campus of Western Washington University through Nov. 22.

With Bland and Kornberg living at the country’s east and west extremes (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; and Obstruction Island, Puget Sound, respectively), the collaboration unfolded largely through email exchanges, phone calls and a crucial in-person meeting at Kornberg’s remote island studio in 2012. The resulting dialogue provoked a declaration that neither artist would be able to voice on her own.

Madonna Comix’ figurative core grew out of a series of 4"x5" black-and-white negatives Kornberg shot in the 1990s. She mined her extensive body of work for additional image references, even raiding the family photo album for a snapshot of her holding her infant daughter (“Madonna Combustion”).

Kornberg also took pictures specific to the project, such as a beaten-up suitcase, underpants and bra, her own hands (“Madonna of the Suitcase”), a grocery bag, laundry basket and broom (“Madonna of Materialism”), to cite just a few examples. Other graphic elements in the many-layered images include antique maps and cityscapes of Jerusalem.

Celia Bland’s fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have recently appeared in Witness, The Cortland Review, Poetry International, The Narrative Review (where her poem “Wasps” was named one of the year’s best), Yellow Medicine Review, Green Mountains Review and Drunken Boat.

Dianne Kornberg’s photographs and photo-based prints have been exhibited nationally and internationally in more than 25 solo exhibitions, and are represented in numerous museum, public and private collections, including the American Embassy in Belize, the Henry Art Gallery, the Houston Museum of Art, the International Center for Photography, the Princeton Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum.

In conjunction with the Dianne Kornberg: Madonna Comix and Other Collaborations exhibit and the Society of Photographic Educators NW conference at Western, the artist will offer a walking tour and book signing at noon on Sunday, Oct. 12 in the Western Gallery. Free and open to the public.

For more information on the show, contact Chris Casquilho, Western Washington University’s College of Fine and Performing Arts manager of Marketing and Special Events, at (360) 650-2829 or chris.casquilho@wwu.edu.