Susanne Slavick's, "Ghost Ship," 2017, archival digital print on Hahnemühle paper, 4 x 6 inches.
Current issues are examined through a mix of media in an exhibition at Fredonia’s Cathy and Jesse Marion Art Gallery.
Titled “for nothing is fixed,” the exhibition of 43 works by Pittsburgh artists Susanne Slavick and Andrew Ellis Johnson opens Tuesday, Sept. 8, on the campus of SUNY Fredonia. The gallery is located on the main level of Rockefeller Arts Center.
Featured are paintings, drawings, prints and videos that examine global immigration, human rights abuses and social justice. Through their works, Slavick and Johnson “examine the contradictory fears and hypocrisies, ignored histories, and punitive policies surrounding immigrants and refugees.”
There will be a free public reception with the artists on Friday, Sept. 11, from 6 to 9 p.m. in the gallery. The exhibition, which is also free and open to the public, runs through Friday, Nov. 20.
Slavick and Johnson are both professor emeriti of Art at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art.
After graduating from Yale University in 1978, Slavick studied at Jagiellonian University in Krakow and in 1980 earned an MFA at the Tyler School of Art in Rome and Philadelphia. She joined the CMU School of Art in 1984 and became the first woman to serve as its Head, from 2000 to 2006. In 2019, she was awarded both the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association and the Henry Hornbostel Teaching Award from CMU. Slavick retired from Carnegie Mellon University in 2022.
Pursuing film and painting, Johnson studied at the State University at Buffalo and completed his B.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. After years in Europe and Asia, he earned an MFA in Art at Carnegie Mellon University in 1994. Subsequently, he attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and a Poznan Academy of Fine Arts residency in Skoki, Poland. He taught at the State University at Buffalo between 1999 and 2004 where he founded PED, a socially engaged collective that has performed in Buffalo, Belfast, Chongqing, Rio de Janeiro, St. John’s, Tonawanda and Toronto. Johnson retired from Carnegie Mellon University in 2025 after teaching there for two decades.
Slavick and Johnson write in their artist statement, “for nothing is fixed is a condensed lament for a state of brokenness, an expectant charge to make things right or whole...Movement, impermanence, and change are all inherent to migration and what it encompasses.”
In her "Ghost Ships" series of archival prints, Slavick meshes ancient maritime fables and myths with modern global refugee movements, to reveal that such journeys are a recurring and fundamental part of human history. In her Retraction paintings and Red Carpets digital photographs, the red carpet is a symbol of the Statue of Liberty’s welcome to immigrants — “Give me your tired, your poor, /Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — now retracted.
Several of Johnson’s drawings and prints reference recent incidents. In Broad Daylight is a series of collages in which Johnson considers current Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tactics and some of their consequences. In his 2023 ink drawing Lifeguard (Gregory Wayne Abbott), Johnson references the Texas governor’s attempt to deter migrants by installing razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande and a chain of giant buoys in its waters.
A complimentary exhibition catalog is available at the Marion Art Gallery or by request. The catalog was designed by Jason Dilworth, associate professor of Graphic Design at SUNY Fredonia.
The publication includes an essay titled “A Wound and a Map” by Ismail Einashe, an award-winning British-Somali journalist and author whose work on migration and refugee issues has appeared in numerous publications, including Foreign Policy, The Guardian, BBC News, The Nation, The Sunday Times and ArtReview. Einashe was a 2025–26 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan and is currently a visiting lecturer there.
“for nothing is fixed” is supported by the Cathy and Jesse Marion Art Gallery Endowment Fund of the Fredonia College Foundation, as well as Friends of Rockefeller Arts Center. Gallery hours are: Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 4 p.m., Friday and Saturday from noon to 6 p.m., Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., and by appointment.
To learn more about the exhibition, schedule a group tour or request an exhibition catalog, contact Gallery Director Barbara Räcker at (716) 673-4897 or via email barbara.racker@fredonia.edu.
