http://samantha-dirosa.squarespace.com/projects daily 1.0 2025-09-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1444685725565-DOQJ7UW3CFLP9TRNMEGG/IMG_3586.jpg Projects - Elegies from the Medical Terminology Study Card Set, 2013 In Elegies from the Medical Terminology Study Card Set, I appropriate and recontextualize vintage medical terminology study cards, found in a thrift store, to re-envision our cultural relationship to the body. The initial context of these study cards, to support training on diagnosis of the body, is subverted in the process of burning and removing text. The words that remain coalesce, to speak sentimentally to the emotional and psychological states brought about by longing, sadness, desire, and loss. Some poems dwell within grief, some within ecstatic passion, and yet others suggest paths to healing and wholeness. The transformation of prosaic medical text into poetic metaphor suggests more multi-dimensionally what we contain in our bodies. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1445517395928-H5R5URXGIGJBK6SFQAYP/sally.jpg Projects - Stills from 'Gaze Study', 2005 Two-channel video A video/sound project that has taken on several forms, Mapping Meg Ryan involves deconstructing formulaic moments from popular Meg Ryan romantic comedies to underscore the homogenous narratives and overt happily-ever-after implications that repeat from film to film. Gaze Study, in particular, is a documentation of longing gazes performed between Meg Ryan and her love interests in the final moments of the films. The accompanying audio consists of fragments from threshold moments or instances when the protagonists experience conflict or disillusion. Removed from their context, abstracted, then woven back together, the resulting form is a virtual “megscape”. In its totality, the video and sound provides a loop of sorts, where longing, desire, and uncertainty are exposed, but no climax or resolution occurs. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1444761387598-ATOHVFKBGGP0PRZMICGA/S_DiRosa.jpg Projects - Mourning Lightness, 2005 Chromogenic prints, 8x8" On my long and frequent drives between Northern Idaho and Western Oregon I would often pull over to collect butterflies that had been hit by cars in their attempts to cross the highway. These images are direct scans of their bodies. Like antiquarian death photographs where the subject is depicted as sleeping, here the butterflies are also transformed - their lifeless bodies frozen, some as if still in flight. Seemingly preserved like organic remains in amber, an aura of melancholic idealism haunts these pieces. I regard them as symbolic frozen moments of "blissful" time, indicative of what we eternally attempt to contain, yet what possesses no grounded form. Slick photographic surfaces cradle figments of lightness, referencing death both literally and symbolically. By "death" I not only mean the departure of a loved one, but the passing of experience itself, whether it be marriage or youth, or briefer moments "protected" within memory. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1444693855464-DGBIC0PU0MJTI5VW85LH/haiku+2.jpg Projects - Elegy 1, 2015 Film stills from 'Prelude to a Kiss' and 'Kate and Leopold'; video stills from youtube broadcast of Fukushima hydrogen explosion. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1485864558018-R2KVGEOA00FNV8DZI3OF/landscape+plan2_web.jpg Projects - Residential permaculture plan, 2016 Graphite and ink. Overall mission/goal: to create a “homestead” model for small-scale urban permaculture design in Latham Park, which incorporates mid-century modern aesthetics and emphasizes connections between: the homestead and the larger neighborhood; human and non-human community members; “inside” and “outside”; and public and private. Objectives: • produce food both for the family and for animals (fruit, herbs, vegetables) • manageable, low-maintenance • artfulness and intentionality • serenity, create an urban oasis • community (with human and non-human) • work with what’s here (least change, greatest effect!) • deter mosquitos Outcomes: • create a front-yard “victory garden”, public eating space, and a curb herb garden for neighbor foraging • front-yard topiary plantings, for visual aesthetic purposes, artfulness/humor, and vertical gardening • plants for pollinators (bees, butterflies, caterpillars) and wildlife habitat • fencing/screens for privacy/improved view • slow/catch water with contour planting, rainwater catchment, mulching, drip-irrigation • backyard food forest with fruit trees • conveniently located kitchen garden for herbs/greens/tomatoes • fish pond for serenity and mosquito control • strategically places gathering/sitting spaces • incorporation of container gardening and appropriate hardscaping for mid-century modern aesthetic integration • compost: for food scraps and chicken manure • bee hives • chickens / chicken run that has both warm, sunny spots, and cool/shady spots https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1481220548725-DEL2BR3E1HYTSKGTX1AW/Scan+4.jpg Projects - 37.421467˚ In fall 2014 I embarked on a pilgrimage to a site just south of Half-Moon Bay, California. The purpose of the trip was to visit a particular point on US soil and gaze precisely west. Directly across the ocean, on the exact same latitude (37.421467), lies the Fukushima nuclear power plant that saw a series of hydrogen explosions and meltdowns after the March 2011 tsunami that struck Japan. During the trip, I extensively photographed the haunting landscape that existed between the coastal highway and the beach, collecting “specimens” to also photograph when I returned home. 37.421467 is an extension of earlier projects: for the last few years through media appropriation, sound, text, video, and installation, I have explored the gravity of the Fukushima accident, seeking to underscore challenges to sustained empathetic engagement with global environmental tragedies. The Cowell Ranch Beach provided the closest conceptual point in the US to the accident, though obviously not visible to the eye, as 5069.1 miles of ocean exists at the land’s edge. The time spent in this landscape was an act of “seeing”––a poetically futile gesture to make the invisible visible. Equipped with a compass and a camera, I photographed foggy landscapes of harvested brussels sprouts, flocks of crows, extensive beach detritus, and the ocean itself, while aware of the rumors/reports of plumes, both through air and water, that have delivered some amount of fallout onto the west coast. I used precise directions as my guide, as a way to anchor the photographs literally to place, but also to strengthen the relationship between this landscape and what lies directly across the Pacific. For me here, the camera acts as a symbolic microscope, but magnifying absence––pointing to what is not here, but what exists closer than we can intellectualize or feel. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1481301027157-EJGB3ZX0GWVIFZAGXUBE/DiRosa7.jpg Projects - Containing Lightness, 2003 Silver, wax tealight candles, insects The evening my marriage ended 24 insects committed suicide. It was a kamikaze mission. All flew directly into the flame of candles I had placed around my campsite. Their found corpses form the crux of this work. These wax containers resonate as frozen moments in time, metaphorical photographs imbued with a melancholy nostalgia. As a symbolic mediator of ephemeral experience, I cast silver bubble wands from the common plastic kind to cradle the residue of the insect's encounters with the tealight candle flames. The milieu of the installation mimics that of scientific documentation: the insect acts as specimen, the cool silver bubble wand performs as an inspection device. But the juxtaposition subverts the very function of an archive's sense of permanence, exposing the fragility of memory and history. They testify only to ephemerality and the passing of time itself. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1481728928269-CFMO3P0AZJ8FCCHZP7SU/_MG_0965.JPG Projects - In(n) and Out of Nowhere, Cougarland Motel, 2007 For In(n) and Out of Nowhere I invited a group of local and regional artists to construct site-specific installations in rooms at Cougarland Motel that responded to one singular question: how does the space perform? The artists were asked to transform the room, while considering the motel rooms many potential contexts. There were some challenges, however: artists were not allowed to remove any contents from the room, and they were prohibited from using the room as a traditional gallery space. They would have from check-in time to 7pm to install, and the room would be returned to its original state by check-out time the following day. This project brought together artists and architects from the Palouse region of Washington state as well as the Seattle area. Their diverse installations gave form to such themes as travel, transience, isolation, desire, and the boundary between public and private space, among other ideas. In(n) and Out of Nowhere was inspired by Leon Johnson's MotelHaus project in Eugene, Oregon. It would not have been possible without the support of the Visual Performing and Literary Arts Committee and The Forst Endowed Fine Arts Visiting Artist Program. Sound installations not pictured: Randall Teal, Dido and Aeneas, and Perri Lynch, Topio Oneiro: The Place of Dreams. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1444754288844-WSEN4SW28PMQW76F2MMH/Slide5.jpg Projects - Gathering Dust: Sediment/Sentiment, 2008-09 Mixed Media A collaborative project with poet and landscape theorist Jolie B. Kaytes, Gathering Dust: Sediment/Sentiment integrates poetry and photographs to convey layered narratives regarding geology, memory, and human occupation of the landscape. Inspired by the study of landforms (geomorphology), the project uses the concept of sedimentation to explore issues of sentimentality. Sediment, rooted in the Latin verb sedere, means "to settle, to sit" and refers to depositing substances. Sentiment, from the Latin sentire, means "to feel" and is associated with collecting and recollecting memories. Both terms allude to the processes of setting down material and layering. In linking sediment and sentiment, the project extends the language of science to reveal how humans experience and remember the ground; it examines how people inhabit and are products of landscape processes. Gathering Dust: Sediment/Sentiment translates the vocabulary of science into the vocabulary of lived moments https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1617730444644-O3CGC41SEO0FDDEJ61CX/Isis.jpg Projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1444696940333-GZ89IK3HVI7SU01KSNE0/Screen+Shot+2015-10-12+at+8.34.58+PM.png Projects - Ricochet, 2013 Single-channel video, live score 'Ricochet' was originally a commissioned piece to accompany live music performance. Taking the form of a cinepoem, the work uses appropriated footage from the Prelinger archive to explore the haunting nature of our atomic legacy. Composed by Maurizio Guerandi. Performances by saxophonists Steven Stusek and Laurent Estoppey. View the full video here: https://vimeo.com/58791643 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1444738315265-ADG3LV41L1G0TMWQODUJ/IMG_5397.JPG Projects - Between Here and There Lies Fukushima, 2013 Braille text, scrap-booking embellishments Scrapbooking embellishments serve to adorn experiences “preserved” between the pages of ready-made scrapbooks: some moments from our past are made pretty, while others are implicitly erased. In the piece Between Here and There Lies Fukushima these embellishments are poetically transformed into braille text on the gallery wall. "Here is vague, "there" is vague... where is Fukushima exactly? The text metaphorically points to a kind of blindness and invisibility. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1757967205543-JRJEUZBLE3AUYP82S7Y1/PXL_20240213_145650087.MP.jpg Projects - Tell Me Something That Breaks Your Heart, 2024 Single-Channel Video, Typewriter, Water-Soluble Paper My current creative practice moves between gallery and community, centering on the sacred work of grief. In a culture often fearful of sorrow, I use ritual, somatic practices, and the expressive arts to help reclaim grief as a communal experience rather than a private burden. This piece adapts a grief-ritual practice called the repeating question, where one partner holds space while the other responds spontaneously to a single prompt. In the video, I continually ask: Tell me something that breaks your heart. Viewers are invited to respond via typewriter, adding to a collective record of heartbreak. The typewriter itself malfunctioned during the process—words bled together, letters skipped, spacing collapsed—creating a fragmented, unruly text that mirrors the raw, imperfect nature of grief. At the close of the exhibition, the pages were dissolved in water and then offered to a tree, transforming grief into nourishment. This ritual act acknowledges both the burden and the gift of sorrow, reminding us that heartbreak, when shared, can be composted into new forms of connection and life. http://samantha-dirosa.squarespace.com/about daily 0.75 2025-09-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/561be051e4b0a9c0d62ed309/1447781430440-HRGG0ACMVMFGNET3J4DX/image-asset.jpeg Statement http://samantha-dirosa.squarespace.com/page-cv daily 0.75 2021-04-06