Laura Bell and Ian Ganassi – “The Corpses”
Laura Bell, a painter based in the Bronx, and Ian Ganassi, a poet in New Haven, met as artists in residence at the Millay Colony. In 2005, Ian mailed Laura an unfinished poem and handwritten phrases on a piece of printer paper stained with coffee rings, and in an accompanying letter asked her to do something to it. This became the first move in what evolved into their collaborative collage series, “The Corpses,” titled after the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse. With each mailing, words, images, and objects were added and new pieces were started; at any point, either of them could call a work finished. At first it was assumed that Ian would contribute text and Laura visuals, but this division soon dissolved, with Laura adding lines cut from ads or subway handouts and Ian melting crayons and experimenting with paint. Each had already been using collage methods in their own bodies of work, Ian with overheard and appropriated lines in his poems, Laura with photos and laser prints in the grounds of her paintings.
Pop culture, politics, religion, and poetry made appearances, and recurring images and phrases created echoes and connections. A collage went back and forth many times or made only one circuit between New Haven and New York. The pieces were minimal or layered; early works tended to be more spare, later works often gathered more objects, though over the years this followed an ebb and flow. Some pieces developed themes or functioned almost as diaries (a hospital glove, a postcard); time frames are felt in political or current events' references. The gathering of materials became a consuming habit, combining found objects, text, drawings, ads, photos, fabrics, and all manner of mixed media—a painterly, visceral process, the anti-Photoshop. “The Corpses turned us into scavengers,” Ian said. “We ended up trying to get the whole world into them.”
The process retained its initial sense of play while also reflecting battles over the obliteration of a passage of paint or text or the declaring of a piece finished. The series quickly demanded a level of intention equal to the work they were publishing and exhibiting individually. Called “joyously Fluxus-like” by Robert Shuster in the Village Voice and described by writer H. Byron Earhart as going “beyond collaborative to a kind of conspiratorial imagination,” “The Corpses” evolved into more than a decade of personal and material call-and-response.
"The Corpses" project ran from 2005 until 2025, the last year of poet Ian Ganassi's life. He completed his final round of moves on the last batch of collages in New Haven, a little over a month before he died.