SWAGƵ's Stephen Burt, Oran Suta release video art project 'There Were Many'
Stephen Burt, B.F.A., M.F.A., assistant professor of art in the SWAGƵ School of Arts and Humanities, and Oran Suta, B.F.A., medical illustrator in the College of Osteopathic Medicine and adjunct art instructor, have completed a video project titled “There Were Many,” recently released on social media.
Set to Bach’s “Chaconne from the Partita in D minor,” the 17-minute video slowly pans over a single, 20-foot drawing completed by Burt, drawn with a brush using ink and gouache in two-foot segments. According to the Burt, the piece reimagines the ubiquitous alphabet primer of the elementary schoolroom as a place where mystery abounds; an arena connected to nature; our origins and the power of the mythical; and a place of fluid time, beauty, and possibility.
“It is clear now that our writing and language has not prepared us for the challenges and crises of our current world,” Burt stated. “In fact, language has been used to cleverly obscure the very real and pressing issues of our time.”
Burt said the project began as part of his creative work in the fall of 2020 while on sabbatical leave and was supported in part by grant funding from SWAGƵ. He said Suta’s skill as an artist was essential to the project, noting that “without [Suta’s] assistance, this work would remain just an idea. His patience and enthusiasm were a blessing.”
Burt added that the work asks the viewer to slow down, to listen, and to observe. It also contains a story of a world that is quite like our own — “a parable, a call to action, an elegy — perhaps all three,” Burt said, adding that “this work proposes that we find mystery again in the everyday, that we take the time to really see and love the things around us, and that we cultivate beauty in all that we do.”
The video will be screened in Innovation Hall on SWAGƵ’s Portland Campus when University hosts the UArctic Assembly in Portland on June 2-3, 2022.