Context is King at Artworks Trenton

By Thomas Kelly

Phillip McConnell, a Trenton artist who has been fully immersed in making art over the past five years, is launching a solo exhibition of abstracted photo works at Artworks Trenton.

The exhibition’s title is “Context is King.”

Featuring works shaped by “glitches” created with digital codes and photomanipulation, it opens on Friday, February 3, from 6 to 8 p.m., and remains on view through February 25.

McConnell, 32, says he gets those “glitches” by adding a photo jpeg into a program usually designed for text, Notepad ++, then manipulating the code until he receives the desired effect.

Like many art discoveries, his methodology was a pleasing happenstance. Now his approach is similar to free-form jazz.

“It started when I was working as a freelance programmer. One day I was coding a website in HTML using a notepad program. I went to add a photo to it, and I somehow messed it up. The picture became distorted. After that, I kept repeating and repeating the process and here I am five years later,” he says during a recent interview.

The Trenton-born McConnell’s mother was a nurse and his father a corrections officer. As a young man, McConnell wanted to explore his Southern heritage and go to a historically black college in the south, where his parents were originally from.

That desire led McConnell to Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina, where he majored in photography and minored in English — it was in those classes he found a love for poetry and cites the influences of contemporary American poets Rudy Francisco, Neil Hilborn, and Phillip Kaye.

“It was nurturing as I was enveloped and very comfortable in the culture of the school and the people. Most of the students were somewhat local from South Carolina and the surrounding area. It was a very different feeling being in the majority,” he says.

The Artworks exhibition — which combines both of his academic pursuits — showcases approximately 30 pieces printed on canvases ranging in sizes 16 by 20 inches and 48 by 48 inches.

The reason for the variation is that “some pieces are more complex and need to be larger. I want to be able to see them clearly from across the room.”

McConnell says that for the title “context is used to give meaning to content we ingest so that we can better understand it. Language equals meaning and meaning equals experience.”

The content here includes visual, audio, and written words viewers encounter — that includes poetry.

“The work in this exhibition will be an amalgamation of two different art forms, poetry and visual art. Each piece of artwork will be accompanied by a poem. This exhibition will explore the relationship between art and poetry,” he notes in the exhibition statement.

The following pairing is an example of the approach. In his poem “Letters from an Immortal Soul 13,” he writes: “You showed me that even in those moments that seem black and white, if we looked for the color it’s always there where our hands meet.” Its accompanying image is of a couple shown multiple times yet with a focus point being their hands.

In his poetry — which he will read at the February 3 opening — and in his images McConnell is introspective and guided by his mental state at the time the poems and images were made.

“It’s really how I’m feeling,” he says. “This current body of work has a dark section with a darker subject matter, which is a direct reflection of how I was feeling when I made it. I deal with depression and anxiety, which is reflected in my work and subject matter.

“While creating this body of work, I think I was at my most alone and lowest because I had lost someone very important to me. I want to make work that resonates with other people like me, in that state. Mental health isn’t something that is openly talked about in the Black community, so if I could make something that conveys a feeling that someone else may not have the words to describe, then I’ve done what I sought to do.”

As a full-time employee at the Apple Store in Quaker Bridge Mall, McConnell says finding time to work on his art is one of his challenges.

“I have been making pieces for this show for the last two years. I’ve been writing poems and making art here and there, but only within the last four months did I make the bulk of the work.

“Time is always a rough one. Making time for art caused a large fissure in my last relationship. Another thing I struggle with is finding the will to make art. For me, I can only create from what I know, but what I know most is the good and the bad things I’ve experienced in life. This makes the things I create deeply personal. If I am sad my art will reflect it, if I’m happy my art will reflect that. So, I have these long stretches of pieces that fall somewhere on either side of that spectrum.”

The Artworks main gallery is a good fit for McConnell where several artists inspired or mentored him. That includes Tamara Torres, who has a studio in the building, Artworks artistic director Addison Vincent, and Artworks managing director C.a. (aka Craig) Shofed.

“(They) have all guided me and helped shaped me as an artist,” he says. “They taught me many lessons. Craig taught me the business of art, Addison taught me to embrace darker subject matter, and Tamara taught me how to dig deeper and make art of substance. Tamara also told me she really wanted to see me make art that is very personal. I have also learned a lot from Trenton curator Brass Rabbit. This exhibition comes from all this.”

McConnell also appreciates the closeknit Trenton art community and speaks about how supportive the artists, venues, and patrons can be.

“Artworks is responsible for my being an artist. They gave me a chance when so many other galleries had said no to a new artist. I had my first solo show there in the community gallery which is the long central hallway. I’ve been trying to get the main gallery for six years now. I made a body of work that was good enough to be in the main gallery. I submitted it and was given a ‘yes.’

“This is the most complex and honest body of work I’ve ever made.”

Context is King, Artworks Trenton, 19 Everett Alley and South Stockton Street, Trenton. Opening reception Friday, February 3, 6 to 8 p.m. On view through February 25, Tuesday through Saturday. Free. www.artworkstrenton. org.