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Professor's work featured at Minneapolis Institute of Arts

By Carl Schroeder '05
July 23, 2007

Ancient buildings from three continents are recreated in St. Olaf Associate Professor of Art Mary Griep's Anastylosis series of wall-sized collaged drawings, currently on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Griep's exhibit, which is free and open to the public, runs through August 12 in the museum's Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program gallery.

In a recent feature in the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune Griep describes her work, saying: "Because [these] buildings were erected over long periods of time, there are gaps and inconsistencies in the design, and things that don't quite fit together. My drawings don't represent exactly what is there, but the experience of being there."

The Anastylosis display, named after an archaeological restoration process, depicts four sacred buildings from the 10th through 12th centuries, including the French Chartres Cathedral and the Cambodian Hindu Temple of Angkor Wat. To create each piece, Griep combines layers of original drawings, photograph fragments and other materials in intricately detailed panoramic collages up to 30 feet in length.

Chartres Cathedral
A facade of France's Chartres Cathedral. The work, part of St. Olaf Associate Professor of Art Mary Griep's Anastylosis series, currently is on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
According to Griep, the pieces are intended as personal meditations on her experiences visiting and researching these ancient sacred buildings, not as literal or historical depictions. She spends about a year producing each piece, the most recent of which portrays the millennium-old Palace of the Governors in Uxmal, Mexico. She has received a Minnesota State Arts Board grant to visit Turkey this fall to start her next entry in the series, a medieval mosque.

Griep hopes her drawings will inspire further reflection on faith, architecture and world history. "I hope viewers will be intrigued by what such widely disparate cultures were doing during the same time period." she says. "I want people to think about the abiding human need to create sacred spaces across cultures."

Griep holds degrees from Macalester College and Hamline University, and has been a St. Olaf faculty member since 1988, specializing in drawing and painting. She began her Anastylosis project with a series of detail sketches of European cathedrals, which she made during a 1998 St. Olaf Interim trip. Since then she has produced more than 100 smaller drawings and studies of religious architecture, as well as the four wall-sized works currently displayed at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Griep will present a free public discussion of the Anastylosis exhibit Thursday, June 28, 7 p.m., at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Art critic Michael Fallon will host a second discussion Thursday, July 26, 7 p.m., at the same location.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.