Cornell art senior Mirela Pribac describes her hometown of Târgu Mures in Romania's Transylvania region as "an oasis of ethnic harmony and rich intercultural exchange" -- an exception in the conflict-riven Balkan region.

The city itself is no larger than Cornell's campus, but its Austro-Hungarian influences and exceptional schools -- among the best in Europe, Pribac says -- make it "special." The daughter of two physicians, she studied art for eight years there, starting in elementary school, in addition to standard subjects.

Pribac chose Cornell because its art program is one of the few affiliated with architecture and planning programs in a vibrant university. Târgu Mures and Ithaca are on the same latitude, so she was prepared for cold winters. For fun outside the art studio, she joined the university's competitive ballroom dancing team.

But when she spent half her junior year in Rome as part of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning's program there, the experience changed her life -- and art. Seeking to create art that tells stories and is grounded in "the real," she found fresh subject matter: battered dolls in the city's flea markets, and women and girls in a nearby community of gypsies. She photographed both, superimposing doll faces over real ones "to get to the core of the societal perceptions of [female gypsies] and our contemporary projections onto them." The works were exhibited at her first international show, at the Romanian Academy in Rome in June 2005.

She also photographed lonely children and their only possessions -- dolls -- at a sanatorium-boarding school in Gornesti, Romania, over the last winter intersession, and recorded their stories.

"I have always been fascinated by issues pertaining to childhood, particularly dolls and the way children interact with them," says Pribac. For her senior project she has turned the photographs into nonreligious icons -- painted with gold leaf and mounted on wood, with holes carved in them to reflect the emotional void in the children's lives. Written excerpts from their stories appear through the holes.

"Mirela's art is both visually engaging and conceptually provocative," says Todd McGrain, Cornell associate professor of art.

"I've been impressed by the aptitude of thought revealed in her art and her articulation of that aptitude," says Buzz Spector, professor and chair of the art department.

After she graduates, Pribac will enter the contemporary art program at Sotheby's Institute of Art in London. "The program attracted me because I feel I need to make my own art in an open city, where I can keep up with the contemporary art scene," she says.

Pribac's long-term dream is to open her own gallery in the city she fell in love with during her Cornell semester there -- Rome.