January 10 - February 28, 1998

Layers: Between Science and the Imagination is the product of a partnership among Smith & Nephew, Inc., the University of South Florida's Contemporary Art Museum and the USF Institute on Aging. We hope that it will stand as a model of creative possibilities tendered by the corporate-academic alliance. The five artists in the exhibition were commissioned to use their own vocabulary to translate the voices of their collaborators, elderly patients of long term care facilities and youth groups. The elderly provided their stories, the youth interpreted them and gave them a visual form. The artists were in the enviable position to apply the language of a generation facing the XXI Century, to render the life-affirming stories of those who forged the way and steadied their journey. The artists were asked to create Artists Books. The results are greater than the sum of their parts. The exhibition explores the artistsÕ commitment to express themselves in new and ambitious forms. Layers brings to the cultural arena a forum where diverse voices find acknowledgment in an equal ground, a place where we find the challenge of our differences and the comfort of our commonalities.