FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 28, 2013
PRESS RELEASE
CONTACT: SUE ABRAMASON 412 681 5449 sueabe@pghfilmmakers.org
CYNTHIA ZORDICH 412 760 2752 CAGE3624@AOL.COM WWW.CYNTHIAZORDICH.COM
ARTIST COMBINES DATED NEWSPAPER CLIPPING WITH STEELERS SIDELINE PORTRAITS TO EXPOSE THE HARSH REALITY OF NFL AND THE EMOTIONS OF LETTING GO.
Pigment and Silver
Location: Pittsburgh Filmmakers Galleries
477 Melwood Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
June 28, 2013 to September 13, 2013
Cynthia Zordich combines dated Pittsburgh Post Gazette clippings, sideline player portraits and excerpts from her book When The Clock Runs Out to document the struggle of transition many players face when their NFL career comes to an end.
Black and White portraits taken by Zordich at a 1999 Steelers home game serve as relics of yesteryear. Shot on 3200 Tmax film, the negatives have been scanned and layered with imagery, color and text. Murals are created, printed and transferred to newspaper that has been mounted to 2.5' by 4' steel plates.
"Transition is often a difficult period in any life as it provokes change and with change comes uncertainty," says Zordich. "Players in transition can be faced with deep emotional scars as every aspect of life as they know it is pulled from them. The NFL can become intoxicating. Players may mistakenly become accustomed to the treatment, some falsely believe it will last forever."
The haunting images serve as precautionary tales. They force current and future players to acknowledge their inevitable destiny. They challenge the current player to change the course of their lives by preparing for life after the game early in their careers. They confirm the one thing that all players have in common and that is that one day they will be done. Outside of player impact, Zordich hopes to open the window to player transition for fans as well.
"Keeping the players unnamed was quite intentional," shares Zordich. "Each year, in every sport, we revere the players on the field. When they're replaced it's one easy swipe on the chalk board and in no time someone new is wearing their number. But the NFL is not like the days of the gladiator, when old warriors were thrown on the cart and discarded. Though out of the limelight, these warriors live on. They are men with families... and futures. I want people to think about that as they travel from one piece to the next and realize that many of these players are as forgotten by them as the old clippings beneath them.
Cynthia Zordich is a contributor for the NFL Player Engagement Program which specializes is assisting players and their families in transition. Cynthia offers a unique perspective as the wife of a 12 year veteran and coach Michael Zordich. They have two sons, Michael V. (PSU '12, Carolina Panthers) and Alex (State Univ. of NY at Buffalo, QB), and a daughter, Aidan (PSU).
www.cynthiazordich.com
https://www.nflplayerengagement.com/wri/
Excerpt from When the Clock Runs Out.
Quit.
For every professional athlete, but especially for the professional football player, quit is the vilest, the most despicable, the most loathsome of words.
Quit? That is seen as an act of cowardice. It is unthinkable, unforgivable.
Quit? You mean, give up? Give in? Surrender? Concede?
Never! Never, ever, never!
From Biddy Ball on, it has been drummed into them: A quitter never wins and...well, you know how it ends.
So they play on. They play on, no matter what. They play on whether they’re winning by six touchdowns or they’re getting their brains beat in. They play on through tears and fractures and concussions, and in weather that careens from one extreme to the other, from the Hades of training camp to the polar ice cap of the playoffs, and all the while they are told it is simply mind over matter: If you don’t mind, then it doesn’t matter.
They play all the way through the last echo of the whistle. They are told to play every down like it was their last. Because one day, it will be.
Oh my God, what a dreadful thought. No. No. A thousand times no. I can’t let myself think about that. This can’t end...
But of course it can, and of course it will.
One day the decision will be made for them. A coach may make it. Their own body may make it. But someone is going to tell them that it is time to retire.
Retire? You mean quit? That’s what retire means, isn’t it?
Yes, yes it is. It means you have to let go.
It is the single most difficult thing that any of them will ever have to do.
Let go?
They can’t. Not completely. Oh, they will retire all right, but the glorious sounds of battle will clatter on in their ears and a part of them will always remain out there, and sometimes at three in the morning there will be a bone that never quite healed or a joint dull with the ache of arthritis
that will prod them awake and they will remember what it was that caused the hurt, the crushing block, the ripping tackle, the grand collisions. They will awake and grunt with the pain, and the memories will come flooding back, and then it hits them that they still miss it so...
Let go?
The ex-pitcher Jim Boston, in his seminal baseball memoir, Ball Four, wrote the epitaph for every professional athlete when he arrived at this poignant, bittersweet conclusion: “I spent my whole life gripping a baseball, and in the end I found out that all along it was the other way around.”
Let go? Not hardly.
Retire? Yes. Grudgingly, though. With wrenching reluctance. Kicking and screaming all the way out the door.
More than one of them vowed: “They’ll have to tear the uniform off me.” Unfortunately, that can be arranged.
The athlete is the only member of our society who has to die twice.
The professional football player makes a Faustian bargain with society. He is given a glorious half-life and then just as he is coming into his prime he finds himself ripped from the protective, insular cocoon of team and dropped, unceremoniously, into the real world.
Hero to zero.
Just like that.
The great hockey player Gordie Howe once said. mournfully: “They teach you how to play the game, but they don’t teach you how to leave it.”
That is one of the purposes of this book.
For more information on When The Clock Runs Out visit
http://cynthiazordich.com/when-the-clock-runs-out/
Pigment and Silver Complete Artist Selection
A. Jason Coleman
Danielle Goshay
Ellen Bjerklie-Hanna
Brenda Roger
Cynthia Zordich
Location: Pittsburgh Filmmakers
477 Melwood Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
June 28, 2013 to September 13, 2013
Coleman, Goshay and Roger create mysterious and surreal imagery, playing with optics, chemistry and materials. They celebrate aberrations, ghosts and abstract forms that enter our subconscious. Coleman uses old lenses and creative optic effects. Roger employs multiple exposures combining pinhole and lens cameras, then prints using a 19th century process called salt printing. Goshay's work is created using a photogram process or scanner, thus they are cameraless images. "This work is more experimental and so it intrigues and frustrates," says Abramson.
Bjerklie-Hanna and Zordich explore loss and life's transitions. Zordich uses news text with traditional-style portraits to document football players after they've retired from the game. Bjerklie-Hanna experiments with a plastic Holga camera and composite imagery. She looks at her aging parents through their home and their possessions, as she anticipates their passing. "The images from both of these photographers allow an emotional connection with the viewer," says Abramson.