By Cynthia Price
Legal News
Attorney Ruth Tyszka chose to participate in creating a work for ArtPrize that is stunningly visual, and she is quite articulate about its meaning.
“Just Listening,” the imposing statue of Lady Justice, is being shown at Fountain Street Church, as part of the “Art to Change the World: Inspiring Social Justice” exhibit held in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union.
“The piece is meant to raise a question as to whether, and to what extent, the NSA surveillance programs compromise our ideals of justice,” said Tyszka, who works in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and lives in Bloomfield Hills.
“We did a lot of things visually to drive that question home, like folding down Lady Justice’s blindfold so it’s kind of slipping, and the scales of justice kind of cast down... The skirt is covered in newspaper articles about Edward Snowden and the surveillance program and even a little about Julian Assange,” she said. “We just really wanted people to view it in the context of how they think all of that relates to justice.”
“Just Listening” was a collaboration with two other Detroit-area artists, Joan Schwartz and Darcel Deneau. The three had worked alongside each other, each on her own project, for several years.
The idea came out of the conversations they had during that time; once committed to it, they held three planning sessions to get ideas on paper, at the same time pitching the concept to ArtPrize venues.
“Bringing three strong personalities together when we all have a vision was a learning process. It was like a law firm having three partners and no associates,” Tyszka joked. “But we’re really happy with the results. We actually divided up the project into different sections, and each worked separately.”
When the pieces were put together, she said, “we felt we nailed what we had set out to do, and it flowed. That was a good feeling.” Each was free to incorporate details of her own choosing.
Tyszka mentioned that there are a few ladybugs embedded in the red stained glass of the skirt’s stripes, a play on the word “bugging.”
Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of that for the viewer is the use of technology, repurposed or, in one instance, live.
The globe incorporates printed circuit boards, but there is also a running iPad in the front. The tablet searches continually for items with the hashtag #NSA and displays a list of them every five minutes.
Tyszka, who has worked in stained glass for about 13 years, created the globe section as her part.
“I built it on a 30 inch diameter styrofoam sphere,” she says, “and figured out that the surface area is something like 19 square feet. At the time I didn’t quite know what that meant,” she observed with a smile.
And indeed, the physical work to make the art happen took up nearly every spare moment of her “time outside of the day job,” she said.
That is one reason Tyszka is grateful for the schedule predictability of her current position.
She researches and writes recommendations for a federal magistrate at the Eastern District court, which she very much enjoys.
“I”m happy being behind the scenes,” Tyszka said.
The job draws on her previous work as an administrative law judge in the Social Security area, for which she worked in Toledo.
Prior to that, she had been at a large Detroit firm, but immediately after graduating from Wayne Law School, she started out her career clerking for the same U.S. court that now employs her.
Tyszka feels her art is informed by being an attorney, particularly in that she is drawn to detailed work, and at the same time she derives a great deal of satisfaction from involvement in both fields.
“I like the balance,” she said. “They exercise two different parts of me, and one forces me to be more organized in the other.”
The artists are not concerned with winning, considering the massive number of works ArtPrize offers, but Tyszka says she feels they have already won a lot by being accepted at Fountain Street.
“I think our message is stronger here, because of the theme and the quality of the work around our piece — it’s amazing,” Tyszka said. “Being in this venue kind of gives us a serious stamp of approval, and we’re all very proud to be included here.”
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