We are the SUSQUEHANNIC COLLECTIVE, a collaborative artistic effort by Brian Rinaldi and Hayley Hammerstrom. Born out of Coleridge (and Southey's) utopian idea of the egalitarian "pantisocracy"--where a group of English intellectuals would create a commune on the Susquehanna river in the late 18th century--the SUSQUEHANNIC COLLECTIVE is a gallery of our combined work, including verse, photography, collage, original drawings, and audiovisual creations.

The idealism and poetry of Coleridge's fantastical Susquehanna dream represents the authentic and transcendental purposes of the SUSQUEHANNIC COLLECTIVE's endeavors, aiming for beauty, truth, and intimacy in every pen mark, brushstroke, and camera shutter.

Still, the elemental propulsion for our art is Breton’s definition of “surrealism”:

      “Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either 
       verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of 
       thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and 
       moral preoccupation.”

Letting go of control. Accepting beauty in all forms. And, reconstituting the self through nature. That was the dream. The SUSQUEHANNIC COLLECTIVE makes it a sur-reality.