Q&A with UNC art professor Beth Grabowski

This year, Preservation Chapel Hill extended its annual exhibition invitation to UNC art professor and assistant department chairwoman Beth Grabowski, whose exhibition, “Minor Miracle,” marks her first exploration into the world of fiber art.

The exhibition, a departure from her print and photographic work, is centered on the theme of nostalgia, presented as an inextinguishable force. The mixed media collection features wall hangings depicting the eyes of hurricanes.

Staff writer Ryan Schocket talked to Grabowski about her exhibit, which has been on display at the Horace Williams House on Rosemary Street all month — 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday — and will close March 30.

The Daily Tar Heel: Tell us a little about your show.

Beth Grabowski: The show is called “Minor Miracle,” and my ideas surrounding most of my artwork deal with the concept of nostalgia.

DTH: Did you draw on any inspiration for this exhibition?

BG: I think of nostalgia not as the normal, sentimental pastime that we normally attribute to that word, but more as what I’ve been reading from (author) Svetlana Boym.

She talks about a contemporary nostalgia being more about a fear of the future rather than a desire for the past — the idea that we want to reclaim something that we understand or know because the future, at least in the contemporary space, seems unmanageable. Those ideas govern what I look for or look at.

DTH: Can you explain what else your exhibition features and entails?

BG: In the main foyer of the exhibition, there are two wall hangings with hurricanes on them and two smaller prints with the hurricanes. I’ve been talking about things that deny human intervention or human borders. For example, a hurricane isn’t going to recognize the border between U.S. and Mexico — or wars or weather events or clouds. I deal with things that deny human borders that, in a perverse way, unite us all.

DTH: How does this connect with your theme of nostalgia?

BG: There’s a trope in science fiction that says how a threat from the outside is something that unites people. I was thinking in this idealistic way how there are things like nostalgia that could serve to unite us if we just look for them and if we just acknowledge them.

Some can be destructive, like extreme weather events that make us have to band together to help one another, or some can just be metaphors, like the sky. We all live under the sky. It’s these gestures that transcend human difference.

DTH: What inspired your other pieces that dealt with books?

BG: I started looking at old books and looking at the acknowledgment and dedication pages. It affirmed the fact that we are not isolated — that we depend on other people and work with other people. That led me down a different path.

DTH: What are some of the things you did with these books?

BG: I was photographing the blank pages of books. Those are thinking about the things that people don’t say to each other. What are the unsaid things we have?

People often have regrets when somebody dies and they haven’t said the last thing they wanted to say or confirmed their love or told them that they were an asshole. They just didn’t finish their business. There were things left unsaid.

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