Not So Much A Whisper

The Alabama Center for the Arts is pleased to announce its newest show, “Not So Much A Whisper” by Sarah Cusimano Miles. The exhibit will open on Monday, May 8 in the Main Gallery and remain on display until Friday, June 30. This will be Miles’ second show at the Alabama Center for the Arts. A Lunch & Learn reception and artist talk is scheduled for June 30 at 11:30 am in the Main Gallery.

Gadsden, Alabama artist and educator Sarah Cusimano Miles embraces a broad spectrum of photographic practices and uses the confluence of science, technology, and art to inform her imagery. Often, she works with collections of objects and their symbolic associations to comment on the psychology of human experience. Sarah received her MFA from the University of Alabama and is an Associate Professor at Jacksonville State University. “The work in Not So Much a Whisper is inspired by the ability of women to navigate the challenges of life’s encounters with dignity, strength, agency, and grace,” says Miles about her exhibit. “Translucent, lace garments clothe newborns on their christening days, transform girls into women via their first bra, accompany brides down the aisle and ornament the newly wedded on honeymoon nights. Many times, women exist in a binary world where the opposing characteristics of strength and delicacy, power and fragility, and security and vulnerability tend to be perceived as mutually exclusive. The complexity of lace represents the dual nature of these garments as manifestations of purity and sensuality. I contend that while these delicate clothes can influence the wearer to project fragility, in actuality the intricacy of the dresses and longevity of existence signify the full strength and magnitude of woman as individual and of women as cooperative spirit. “I grew up living next door to my grandmother and spent untold hours exploring the contents of her drawers, closets, and dressers. I loved to imagine a time when the objects I found were animated with activity, and to hear stories of her younger years. My grandmother was full of opinions, and minced no words when we spoke of feminine concerns. Her views were antiquated but sound, irreconcilable with my young ideas, but rational. They had been stated to her as truths, and she had passed them on as such to her daughter and granddaughters, in not so much a whisper, but with an unapologetic certainty.”