Artist Story: Mary Dritschel

Mary Dritschel, 2007 CAAP Grant Awardee

This has been the second consecutive year in which I had been awarded funding for an ongoing project. The CAAP grant, in both cases, allowed me to continue having computer assistance and training. With this support I have created an audio/digital installation "A Description of Two Senses in a Political Arena." The audio-photo work is exhibited on a continuous loop either as a computer projection or on an LCD screen and contains close to 300 photographic groupings of individual eyes and mouths taken over a period of three years.

When I began this project almost three years ago, I only had basic computer skills. Despite being an experienced photographer, the digital world and Photoshop were a new language that I needed to learn if I was to realize this work. I discovered that learning computer programs like Photoshop with a personal tutor is very expensive, yet absolutely essential. I was lucky to find a supportive computer assistant who is an artist as well. Fortunately, the CAAP grant has helped me to afford an assistant to teach me the skills I need—and who has now been working with me for over a year.

My work, “Two Senses in a Political Arena,” is an audio-digital work with an accompanying installation of black and white photographs printed on transparent sheets and mounted in lightweight frames. The 300 photographic groupings of individual eyes and mouths appear as disembodied images whose anonymous quality act as a backdrop for text that suggests the state of contemporary political rhetoric in a world of sound bytes. The audio element of the work is the recorded exchange between Senator Joseph McCarthy and the U.S. Army’s chief counsel, Joseph Welch during the Army McCarthy Senate hearings in Washington, D.C. (June 1955).

The motivation for the work was an invitation to participate in the international exhibition, Sens-able, at the University of Reykevik in Iceland in 2006. It was there that I used a three minute edited version of the audio with sixty eight combinations of eyes and mouths. My decision to expand the audio to include the entire nine minute exchange between Senator McCarthy and Joseph Welch meant that I had to increase the number of photographs threefold.

This took me over a year of work and learning to complete—and all this would have been impossible without the CAAP grant. This project has been instrumental in moving my work into a different direction. Until this time I had worked primarily with large-scale installations and now I have the flexibility and knowledge to exhibit different combinations of the installation, video and audio.

Without the financial assistance afforded me by the CAAP grant I would not have been able to produce this piece. The training required a heavy financial commitment. In order to cut costs for renting my studio space, which under the most ideal circumstances was much too small for my method of working, I found a painter of small canvases to share a small studio. The computer has become my virtual space. For the moment it has supplanted the limiting studio situation, but can never completely replace it. Having a real space gives me the freedom to follow my muse when I want to return to hands-on art making. For instance, I am returning to printmaking and plan to use the computer for my images and the research the work requires. However, the prints will be made in the real studio.

With my renewed interest in printmaking I will check with print studios for fellowships. Meanwhile, I have a series of combined photos and text that I would like to print in book form in the future. All of this depends on where I can find the funding.


Mary Dritschel moved to Chicago in 1986 after living in Brazil for over 8 years. Her work was exhibited widely throughout Brazil and she was twice a participant in the Bienal of Sao Paulo. Her work is included in the History of Art in Brazil and the Survey of 20th century Brazilian Art. Mary Dritschel is an Illinois Art Council grant recipient and a Fulbright Scholar and has been a visiting artist at numerous universities including in Brazil, England, Texas and New York. Most recently, she was awarded her second Fulbright grant for her role as a visiting artist to the University of Zagreb in Croatia. Though Mary works primarily in the genre of installations, she still enjoys creating sculptural objects and photography.