B4 - Artist Conversation - Savannah Paul

Artist: Savannah Paul
Exhibition: Femmentality
Media: Metals, Mixed-Media, Installation
Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Marilyn Weeny Gallery
Website: Savannahpaul.com
Instagram: Savannahcpaul


    Savannah Paul is finishing up her last semester as a fifth year for a BFA Degree in the Metals Program. The metals program is very small with only 8 people working towards that degree and all are female. She started in the metals program about three years ago, but before that was in drawing and painting, which she said has made an influence on her work. Ever since she was young she was always inclined to creating something and then Paul began getting more serious about her work in her last year of high school. Paul explores the ideas of femininity and being strong as a women.

Her figures are made out of wire and take the form of broken up curved lines. They are life size gestures that is not the complete female body but takes on the shape of it. To me the metal looks like twig like figure which adds a very natural element. Each gesture flows with one another to create a unit out of the whole gallery. Then as for her other pieces she used a model of the upper body of a female and then created a necklace out of actual bright orange rape whistles and then used the rope from the whistles to make a giant rope that laid on the ground next to the body.

This gallery in particular takes stand on the pivotal socio-political movement in our community of what it means to be a women. She embodies the powerful women that participated in the #Metoo movement. Her intention is for women and herself to see themselves in these objects, which is why they figures are kind of abstract in the sense of we have to fill the object. Then the whistle piece is a commentary on the appointment of Brent Cabana to our supreme court, it’s using the rape whistle as a jewelry piece to shed light on items like a rape whistle and pepper spray have become a normalized accessory as a women. And also the way the rape culture is in a way glamorized, especially in Hollywood.

Pauls work immediately struck my eye and I found it beautiful yet moving. I’ve been noticing a trend in the works of art based around feminism and that is something that I adore. It is a topic that needs to be talked about and heard. The gestures that she created are one of my favorite styles of art work.