Collegio Online

Issue date: 2/7/08 Section: After Hours

Media Credit: from Mark Malloy’s ‘Scar Tissue’

Natural light seeps into abandoned spaces, lending an eerie feeling to the images captured by Mark Malloy in the exhibit "Scar Tissue: Abandoned Homes of the Northeast Kingdom and the Low Country and Coastal Empire."

Malloy employs a variety of design elements to achieve the sensation of isolation and discord, a process he admits takes mere seconds; time to focus the lens and close the shutter.
The fuzzy, out of focus elements in the works lend a sense of memory and thought. While I viewed the pieces, I remembered an old woman my parents tended to and how her home was falling in around her. Her husband had died and she never bore children; she merely lived in that huge crumbling house with nothing more than her cat. I loved and hated that home because it never felt secure and stable. Through Malloy's use of diverse angles, I feel as if I'm spying on a family and intruding on their lives, or even their deaths.

The floors are cracked and brittle in the "Family Room," which was once nicely decorated with a pretty rug and pictures on the walls. Now the room is dilapidated and structurally unsound; perhaps this deterioration was happening all along, beneath the surface.

The image titled "Spider, Effingham," features a spider making a home in the rubble of someone's life. It feels reminiscent of the life cycle or the human life process. We relocate and someone new moves into our former home to spin their web and create their life from the remnants of ours. The layers of vines resemble how intertwined we are while the portions lacking crisp focus remind us that we're only here for a moment in the vast concept of time.

All of the images feature manmade structures that have remained at least skeletons through the passage of time. The barn, the dresser and the stove all serve important purposes. Malloy's photographs remind me that the projects we put the most effort into withstand time more than the tasks we complete without thought or consideration.

Malloy's exhibit will be on display in the University Gallery at Porter Hall from Feb. 5 to March 5. Malloy will present a lecture at 11 a.m. Friday, Feb. 7, in 107 Grubbs Hall. This gallery is sponsored by the Student Fee Council and Friends of the Gallery and is a part of the Visiting Artist Lecture Series. For more information, contact Stephanie Bowman at sbowman@pittstate.edu.

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