The Art Alliance of Central Pennsylvania will display a multimedia installation dedicated to the victims of the Iraq war and hurricanes Katrina and Rita from February 10-12

LEMONT, PA—Artists Sharon Burkey and Tara Tallman have never shied away from darkness in their work. The two began collaborating for the first time just after the attacks of September 11, while enrolled in a studio photography lighting class together at Penn State. The raw emotions of those harrowing days informed the tone and subject matter of the first piece they made together–-a haunting digital book entitled Feel. Five years and several honors and awards later, the artists are still hard at work--mining the emotional landscapes of grief and loss, striving to awaken calloused-over hearts, and creating thought-provoking prints, films, and objects charged with redemptive beauty.

Their latest work is a multimedia installation entitled The Very Long Day: A Space for Meditation and New Beginnings. The piece juxtaposes references to American lives lost to both the Iraq war and hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and provokes a profound sense of collective national loss. But rather than simply conveying grief, Burkey and Tallman have constructed a place where individual lives can be remembered, acknowledged, and quietly celebrated.

"This show is a way for all of us to stop and think about how important each and every life is," explains Tallman. "When a president dies, there is a week-long fanfare that permeates every newspaper and every major news channel. When a soldier dies or when thousands die together, there is little to no fanfare for the individual. This show is an effort to honor the number of lives lost and also the uniqueness of those lives."

"I want people to see these faces of our fallen soldiers in mass and get to know them and remember them," says Burkey. "I want people to consider the whole tragedy of what went on in New Orleans in a new way that maybe they hadn't, that will maybe make it personal...to think about the sorrow of Harvey Jackson in Mississippi as he felt his wife slip through his fingertips and be swept away by the water, never to touch her again..."

The Very Long Day personalizes the tragedies in several ways. A film of soldiers' faces is projected onto a glittering house, overlaid with text about individual soldiers' personalities and interspersed with images of angel's wings hovering over a pair of combat boots. Dozens of water-filled jars are stacked up in rows, containing a great variety of objects--personal items, photographs, natural debris--representing the aftermath of the hurricanes. Small, hand made artist's books and single sheets of paper tell deeply moving stories of individual loss. Intense, meditative music and candlelight add an atmosphere of profound intimacy.

Weighty issues seem to be what inspire Burkey and Tallman most. A set of slides from their piece Remains--created to document the human devastation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's first day of bombing--won them the 2005 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant which financed the creation of The Very Long Day. Their gripping book The Parting Gifts of Liberation, filled with the heartbreaking stories and images of the first year of the war, garnered local honors and traveled west to Chicago. Making darkly provocative art has brought the two success. But doing such heavy work takes its toll.

"Putting this show together was emotionally one of the hardest things we've ever done," says Tallman. "To this day, I'll be going about my life and suddenly remember a story or a face and tears will just overtake me. As an artist, when something touches you like that, even after you've stared at it for weeks, you know that what you're making is powerful and necessary."

"It's exhausting," agrees Burkey. "Tara and I tell so many ghost stories I can't sleep when we are working. As we collected the portraits the of the soldiers I found myself weeping for some, smiling with the smiles of others and being completely terrified by the eyes of more than one...I have them cataloged in my brain and I don't know if I will ever shake them out. Are they meant to stay there for a reason? I ask myself this all the time."

Burkey and Tallman hope that their spiritual toil will not be in vain--that people who view the show will walk away with something valuable. Perhaps a renewed sense of their own value as individuals, maybe an urge to move this world away from its tragic state, and at the very least, a deeper appreciation for the experiences of others who have lost so much.

"I first wanted to title the show the very long day," says Burkey, "because I thought that mother's who have lost their children to this war must feel like time stands still the day they find out that their child is gone."

But the show is also called A Space for Meditation and New Beginnings. "It's about learning from what's happened, instead of numbing ourselves and stumbling onward," says Tallman. "Apathy leads you straight into the devil's hands," adds Burkey. "It's what they want you to feel. Let the hard shell fall to the ground and allow your new skin to breathe."

The Very Long Day will run from February 10-12, 2006, at the Art Alliance on Pike Street in Lemont. Admission is free. An opening reception will take place from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. on Friday, February 10th.