b'SUMMER 2019[The Demarest Award] is an amazing thing and has enabled me to continue to be a collage artist. I could make smaller work probably, but to do the things that are in my head, there is no way I could have done those without this grant. ALDWYTHSloan describes a brilliance and depth of thinking hidden in Aldwyths work, such as her piece titled Casablanca, a diptych with the left side called Classic and the right side called Colorized. Classic is an orb covered with eyeballs cut from magazines and other publi-cations. The thousands of them covering the orb are visually striking and obscure a deeper significancethey are the eyes of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dali and other artists. So, its the art world looking at you, the viewer, says Sloan. And the title, Casablanca? Whats the most famous line from that? Heres canvases for painting. But she wanted her frameslookin at you, kid. to have more embellishment.One reference has made its way into nearly I would cover [the stretcher bars] withall of Aldwyths workthe zombie ant, which old, cut-up paintings. So I was sort of collaging,she began including in her collages when she making a collage around the outside of theread about the Camponotus leonardi species in painting, she says. And it became moreLawrence Weschlers book Mr. Wilsons Cabinet interesting than the actual painting. of Wonder. After a series of artist residencies, sheThe ants live on the floors of tropical earned her first solo exhibition through Markrainforests. After the ant inhales a spore of the Sloan, the director and chief curator of theOphiocordyceps unilateralis fungus, it climbs College of Charlestons Halsey Institute ofthe nearest tree and buries its head in the bark. Contemporary Art, who visited Aldwyth atThere it dies and begins emitting more spores, her home in Hilton Head, South Carolina.which fall to the ground and infect other ants. Seeing her workspace for the first time, he tookIts like being an artist, Aldwyth said. note of flat filing cabinets labeled Eyeballs,You inhale the spore, then you climb up and Torsos facing left and Arms and Legs, eachyou do it. And supposedly, you inspire someone filled with clippings she would eventuallyelse to do the same thing. incorporate into her work. ByKitty JulianandChristian Snyder | contributing writer'