Amie Potsic: Skin Stories
4.17.2009 - 5.30.2009

Skin Stories is a collection of large-scale silver gelatin prints that address skin, scars and wounds as agents of seduction, spirituality, conflict, and beauty.  Skin Stories is the result of photographic investigations by the artist that explore the physical, spiritual, and psychological terrain of skin in both the human body and religious sculpture.

The artist began by photographing crucifixion and Pietà statues in churches throughout Italy, New York, and San Francisco.  Inspired by erotic poetry written by nuns in the middle-ages, Potsic was drawn to the idealized beauty and sensuality portrayed in Christian iconography. In this context, the wound carries narrative and spiritual significance meant to illicit empathy and identification.  Fascinated by the power of the wound in Christianity, Potsic was led to examine the stories and effects of scars in everyday life.

Simultaneously functioning as a reminder of mortality and symbol of survival, a scar has the power to individualize, aestheticize, violate, and even enliven the person who bears it.  As a psychological and visceral trigger, the scar confronts us both personally and collectively.  It reflects advancements in medical technology and societal notions of bio-progress while revealing one's past and attesting to the body's innate ability to heal itself. 

To explore the narratives born of scars, the artist photographed and recorded over 20 individuals varied in gender, age, and cultural history.  Stories about, and reactions to, the individuals' scars and their photographs are included in audio presented in the gallery space.

Amie Potsic received her MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and is currently the Director of the Career Development Program at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists.™ Potsic has exhibited her work internationally at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Medfoundart in Cagliari, Italy, the Museum of New Art in Detroit, the Woodmere Art Museum and The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, Mission 17 in San Francisco, and 626 Gallery in Los Angeles.  She has held faculty appointments at the University of California at Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute and her work has been awarded by The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Jewish Exponent, and PhotoAlliance.  She has recently been a guest lecturer at The International Center of Photography and curated exhibitions at Maryland Art Place, Icebox Project Space, and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Nick Schonberger is project coordinator for The Rosenbach Museum and senior editor of Words Beats Life: Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture. These venues allow Nick to examine American material life in all its capacities and explore methods of public history with a wide variety of audiences. Along with these ventures, he actively comments on contemporary music and fashion for some highly regarded and well read websites. Nick is a graduate of the Winterthur Program of American Material Culture and is currently working on the exhibition Skin and Bones: Tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor for the Independence Seaport Museum.