BFA Photography Thesis Catalogue Virginia Commonwealth University, School of the Arts
2020
Marlena Ashby Annie Buhrone Kyle Camper Logan Carmone Jae Cha Meagan Gallagher Ryan Hill D'Anna Johnson Brienna Kane Dom Khun Samuel Lo Kylie Newcomb Patrick Owings Aamina Palmer Rebecca Renton Lisa Sadler Francesca Shapiro Jasmine Steinacker Audrey Stemann Tara' Davis Caroline Thompson Lily Wang
Virginia Commonwealth School of the Arts
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BFA Photography Thesis 2019 —20
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Table of Contents
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Marlena Ashby Annie Buhrone Kyle Camper Logan Carmone Jae Cha Meagan Gallagher Ryan Hill D'Anna Johnson Brienna Kane Dom Khun Samuel Lo Kylie Newcomb Patrick Owings Aamina Palmer Rebecca Renton
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Lisa Sadler Francesca Shapiro Jasmine Steinacker Audrey Stemann Tara' Davis Caroline Thompson Lily Wang
She continuously tried to mimic a self portrait polaroid taken by her mother around her own age, which is the only existing self portrait she has ever taken. These images not only show the physical similarities between them, but the feeling of connection as her relationship with her mother shifts from one of authority to one of understanding. Ashby displays the possible connections other young women can discover in their mother daughter relationships.
@mnaphoto.jpg mnaphoto.com
Marlena Ashby
In this photographic study titled Full Circle, Marlena Ashby explores the female experience of coming into adulthood through mother-daughter relationships by examining her own relationship with her mother. Using archival imagery of her mother at her own age, and newly produced self portraits, she seeks to discover the connections and shared trauma that emerge as daughters grow into adulthood. Because of her mother’s aversion to being photographed, she made portraits of her and her mother without showing her entirely to respect her boundaries. The main realization that occured in Ashby’s research was the mental effect of her mother’s perception of self subconsciously projected onto her daughter. Ashby and her mother participate in common mother-daughter interactions symbolizing pressures from society on young women and the desire to live vicariously through our children.
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Where do you see your art going in the future? Where do you hope for it to go? I think a lot of my art making practice will take place online, which is the best for me because I can go anywhere and expose my work to a much larger group of people. I want to work for myself, so I’m more free in where I go and what I make. How do you define personal success and failure in terms of your art making? As long as I am interested in what I’m making then I will always have that drive to continue, but I personally recognize success as my work having an affect on other people. I find happiness in that, but also just being able to make a living doing something I love would be a success to me
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This work, for now, mainly consists of black and white 4 x 5 photographs. In the beginning, I was shooting 35mm, Holga, and Polaroid, I was pulling from the family archive, but I wasn’t feeling satisfied until I turned over to large format. The process is slow, meditative, one that forces me to step back, reconsider, formalize. The images it produces have such a transformational quality; now they are an invitation to not only look, but step into the backyard with us, the front porch, the parking lot. Moving forward, this work will change as my sisters and I change. In the current moment, the 4 x 5 suits us. It is a celebration of our girlhoods while we relish in the progression from young adults to grown women
@anniebuhrone anniebuhrone.com
Annie Buhrone
Finding solace in moments of great tension, my work often considers dynamics of power, relationships (specifically mother/daughter, siblings, and sisterhood), and the incessant desires to return to one’s past. Whether these elements are apparent and present or not, they serve as the foundations for my visual thought processes, guiding my eyes first, mind second. I am continuously enamored with the subliminal power of photography. Through the act of making photographs, collecting, gaining, and remembering, I began an ongoing project centered around my sisters and I. Simultaneously existing as ourselves and as each other, together we embody three different versions of the same woman. The motivation to make this work came from my desire to reconcile our beginnings and honor our unified present.
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What are five things that influenced your thesis project? › › › › ›
Roxi Pop Stacy King Liz Albert Chucky Carbone Jillian Lemons.
How would you describe the visual language in your art? Muted, symbolic, analytical, tense, subconscious. I initially struggled by trying to deliberately define what concepts were influencing and important to my work. Through research and personal reflection, I find it best to do as I please, utilizing photographic processes and materials as a communication line between my inner and outer lives, trusting my subconscious to provide connections to my future self. The work, consisting of photographs (found and created), collages, collections, bits of paper, remembered and noticed patterns, wasted
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film all serve as documentation, experimentation, markers of time. My practice realizes itself through experimentations in both the traditional image making process and new potentials in materiality of The Image. My practice embraces fluidity for sake of pleasure in the present moment, and seeing if it sticks. The process of creating a relationship with a body of work fosters a layered consciousness, allowing my visual language to offer my experience while also remaining mysterious, in motion, and empathetic.
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His influence comes from his early photographic education and the fascination with the basic materials. In a process with so many unknowns, he is gradually discovering more about the process and materials with each session in the darkroom. In their final form, the work makes viewers question what exactly it is they’re looking at. Falling somewhere between photographic and painterly, each piece lives as a unique object with indescribable material qualities.
@ camperkyle www.camperkyle.com
Kyle Camper
Based in Richmond, Virginia, Kyle Camper is an alternative process artist working with expired photographic materials. Utilizing the chemigram process, he works to uncover the limits and possibilities of photographic materials new and old by breaking them down to their fundamental elements and stretching them as far as possible. Being mostly process based, his work aims to show the viewer how it was created, and to expand the way photographic materials are talked about and used. What was once a process that yielded “random” results, Kyle and those around him are discovering more how to control every element to get the desired result. Studying at VCU, he was able to focus solely on the furtherment and discovery of this process, without a heavy conceptual framework. Having the ability to make first and think second, the work takes wild turns often, almost always bringing about new discovery.
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Do you think it’s important or useful to pay attention to what people say about your work?
What are the qualities or skills that make you good at what you do?
Absolutely. Without the critique of my colleagues and viewers of my work, it would have never advanced to the place it’s in today. Many of the conversations I have about this process, both with people educated on it and not, help shape the way I view my practice and the work that comes from it.
My whole life, my Dad has told me to find the few things I truly enjoy, and become really good at them. Not only have I found that satisfaction with the chemigram process, but also in wide format printing. My goal the past few years has been to get as good at doing those two things as I possibly can. My work is an indicator of where I am on that journey, and I look forward to constant improvement in the future.
What do you do when you’re creatively stuck? I let myself be stuck, for a while at least. I have yet to come across a creative rut that time couldn’t get me out of. My innate desire is to create, my brain is always thinking about what’s next. Oftentimes it gets stuck, but the ideas always naturally return as long as I do not force them.
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@logo0n
Logan Carmone
Uncertain Transparency, discusses the shift in identity following the progression of time, and the effect that external forces have on outward appearance. Taking inspiration from physical mass-produced media, such as newspapers and Calvin Klein catalogs, this project discusses the necessity of hiding in plain sight while finding solace in one’s community.
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How did you land on photography as your primary medium? Photography ended up being an accidental love. I initially became interested in darkroom processes and the unpredictable nature of it. Experimental processes, such as chemograms, became important to the beginnings of my photographic works, wherein I’d be forced to trust the process and allow projects to naturally evolve. Did you know right away what this project would become? I had no idea my project would become what it has. I typically have a general idea of what themes I want to explore in a project, but the process tends to change. There were initial plans to make a book or zines, but that eventually became a project focused on finding a new way of incorporating mass-production themes into the work.
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Jaebin Cha
@jaebin_cha
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How did you land on photography as your primary medium? My interest in photography sparked back in the middle school days. I enjoyed watching the sunset, as they are beautiful and it allowed me to relax after occasional stressful days. I decided to go out one day to chase the sunset to capture photos on my iPod, for myself to view later. The beautiful contrast of blue, red, clouds and darkness really fascinated me, in which I decided to get a job at a local market to afford a camera for myself. Where do you see your art going in the future? Where do you hope for it to go? I neglected the idea of being a fine artist a lot back in junior year. Because I am always anxious about the future with how well I would survive and perform in the career field I will be in, I only wanted to pursue the style of commercial photography. However, through the projects I worked on over the senior
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year with the help of Jon Sheridan, I am grateful to know that certain styles or focus in my art practice does not have to be neglected. Continuing the practice of portrait and commercial photography, I hope that my passion grows further in Los Angeles, along with occasional documentary projects in the future.
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This piece tells the story of the peppered moth. The white wings of the peppered moth allowed the species to camouflage with the bark of light trees in 19th century England. As trees grew dark with pollution from the industrial revolution, the moth’s wings darkened as well. When the pollution eventually diminished and the environment began to heal itself, the wing patterns returned to their former white in tandem with the tree bark. This example of adaptation and natural selection served as proof for Darwin’s then-recent theory of evolution. I designed three wooden frames of irregular but interconnecting shapes to represent the various stages in this story of transformation. images of the peppered moths camouflage themselves against a background of speckled paper, which I made by shredding and pressing recycled newsprint.
Meagan Gallagher
Time never ceases its flow. As it passes, no part of reality is immune to the changes it brings. If anything wishes to thrive, it must regularly leave old ways behind and transform itself to maintain harmony with its changing environment. Throughout my studies in photography, I have grown interested in processes that emphasize time and labor, in the meaning materials hold, and in adapting to new forms of presentation.
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What are five things that influenced your thesis project? › › › › ›
Asiatic bittersweet (killer vines) Morning Phase- Beck Time Stamp- Berlin exhibition The darkroom Sustainable practices
How would you describe the visual language in your art? My work is organic, gestural, and embraces the imperfections of process.
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@_ryanhhill ryanhhill.com
Ryan Hill
My work explores and pushes the capabilities of photographic materials. I want to see how far I can push the boundaries of what is typically achieved. Although process is at the core of my artistic practice, I see my need to experiment as an extension of my curiosity about the world we exist in. I often explore how humans perceive and interpret, and how perception and memory affects how we experience and move through life. I question humanity’s place in the world as well as language’s ability– and inability– to describe life’s experiences. I see my work as just a piece of this puzzle, a call to engage with ideas and topics that are often overlooked, to foster a deeper understanding of our place, purpose, and impact in this universe. I see wet plate collodion as mimicking this fluctuation and shifting of memory and life as a whole.
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Materials › Collodion › Bromo-Iodizer 25ml collodion mixed with 40ml bromo-iodizer › Silver Nitrate, 10% › Developer 1:3 developer to water › Silane Added to developer for ambrotypes - helps with glass adhesion › Rapid Fixer 1:3 fixer to water › Varnish Either gum sandarac (tree sap) or shellac (natural resin from female lac bugs)
Instructions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Pour collodion mix onto plate, metal or glass, and tilt to coat. Drain excess back into bottle Sensitize in silver nitrate. 4-5 minutes Expose! Pour developer onto plate along the edge and tilt to coat. Gently rock to keep the developer moving. Develop until you just see the shadows. 30 sec-1 minute Pour off developer and rinse with water Submerge in fixer and watch magic occur right before your eyes...... Don’t forget to rock the tray. Fix 5 minutes minimum Final water rinse. 10 minutes Leave on rack to dry. It will dry slightly lighter.
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What initially drew you to wet plate collodion? It is very tactile; I love the act of doing. Wet plate collodion revitalized my interest in photography again. It is a temperamental process, so every pour is different. I enjoy the happy surprises collodion gives me. Wet plate is an early photographic process, and I feel like there is so much more that can be discovered about it. I also might be addicted to the ether by now. Who knows. What would be considered weird about your practice? Most of my creating is done at odd hours of the day – usually between 11pm and 3am. I find myself most creative at night, when I am tired enough for my inhibitions to fall away but I am still high on adrenaline. I stop overthinking my work at that point.
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How do you define personal success and failure in terms of your art making? I consider work to be successful when I’m enthusiastic about the creative process and content with its results. On the flip side, I have failed myself when I no longer enjoy what I am doing. If even getting to the studio is a struggle, I need to rethink what I’m doing. I am definitely my harshest critic, but my self doubts only spur new experiment ideas.
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@ deesights
D’Anna Johnson
Many of the lingering questions about race lie on the surface of many layers of countless perceptions. W.E.B. Du Bois conceptualized the Black American subject refusing to abandon the very things that made them Black or American. “The veil” is a trope of masking DuBois used to show how Black individuals are not only self-aware but aware of themselves in the context of white America. Further investigating the tropes of Black subjectivity from the male perspective, my work goes deeper, to open a new point of view. I embody the lens of Black female subjectivity and the intersectionality of mixed-race identity. Flowing fabric layers of images and reflection draw the viewer into a journey that reveals facades and unmask barriers that hide familial and ancestral truths. In this space, one can not only meditate and find empathy for the represented community, but also discover themselves. Every angle is considered to see through, around, and in between the piece, yielding authority to each gaze it meets.
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What is on your studio playlist? Music is a great starting point for me as I love to visualize .
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@ briekane briennakane.com
Brienna Kane
In my body of work titled Stories, You Never Told Me, I explore preservation, tradition, and family through the combination of text, photography, & screenprinting. Layering is a large part of my work from the accumulation of crystals and fruit pulp on my 'canned photographs' to cmyk screen prints. These processes allow for chance and connect with the cumulative process of memory and it’s tendency to misrepresent information. I create new, untold memories using the family archive and my own photographs and am interested in the influence photographs have on recollection.
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What would be considered weird about your practice? I use blackberry preserves as a material. I’ve put photographs in a jar of homemade blackberry jam and completed the canning processes, letting the image soak in there for a few weeks before breaking the seal and removing it. I spread jam on the walls and have screen printed using jam as a substitute for ink, I’ve also done this using sunscreen. I enjoy using unconventional materials and getting messy. What initially drew you to incorporate screen printing in your photography practice? I learned how to screen print at the art studio I work at and loved the physical nature of it and the motion. It takes muscle! I wanted to incorporate more layers, different materials, and get messier in my work. I wanted it to feel less precious and to have my hand shown in the work in a more direct way.
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They killed us, two million of us. In attempts to create a classless society, in just four years, the Khmer Rouge eradicated 25% of the Cambodian population, a great majority being intellectuals and artists. Many citizens fled to America to seek a better life, foiling the aim of the regime by establishing rich pockets of culture throughout the United States.
@ dom_khun domkhun.com
Dom Khun
On a brisk jog around my neighborhood, I noticed the persimmon tree in my late grandmother’s yard had stopped blooming. In death, she had taken not only the vitality of her land, but also the remaining connection I had to our culture. She was the matriarch of our family, the roots of our tree and I am her seedling, unfurling what it means to survive and persevere.
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How did you land on photography as your primary medium? Growing up I always wanted to be an artist. I was never naturally gifted with traditional mediums such as drawing or painting. When I was 13 years old I got my first DSLR and I realized I see this world more clearly through a viewfinder. What is on your studio playlist? The Marias, Clairo, SZA, Doja Cat, and a mixture of songs from the early 2000s, How has your view/perspective on art and photography changed due to being in art school? Being a first generation student in art school, I have learned that if you want to have a successful and fulfilling creative career, no one can want it for you more than yourself.
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I create photographic work that explores the complications and intricacies of identity in order to create a comprehensive understanding of it for myself and others. As a mixed-race person from a familial lineage of immigrants of varying socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, my derived interest in deconstructing my own identity has inspired me to explore the inherent mechanisms of identity itself.
I often capture the implicit image, subsequently seeking out the most comprehensive image behind it. My photographs vary in their impact and structure, with some presenting more recognizable visual themes and references, while others are quieter and contemplative. Their juxtaposition to one another is expressed by varying sizes and placements in the exhibition space to suggest dynamic movement and gesture. Sculptural aspects are incorporated to include a tactile, physical reference to the ideas encoded within their respective images. A stray collection of toothpicks and a Star Ferry token are examples of these aspects, placed carefully on the edges of their photograph’s frames. Different colors, tones, and exposures in my images are utilized to form the visual tempo of the work invoked in the viewer. In The Things We Remember color and subject ‘modules’ shift between lush greenery and forever-cloudy skies of Hong Kong’s hills to its dark and claustrophobic hallways and alleys and all the unseen places in-between. Mixed with intimate portraits of my father interacting with spaces from his past, this series recreates a journey through my father and I’s experiences with the city.
@ sam_ g_lo samuello.myportfolio.com
Samuel Lo
I embrace photography as a tool of documentation, subversion, and distortion as essential properties in my images. Illusionistic and poetic motifs in my work are inspired by the reflection-laden photographs of Paul Sepuya and Lee Friedlander to the metaphysical and semiotic explorations of the Postimpressionists and Cubists.
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What are five things that influenced your thesis project? › Stories of my father’s life in Hong Kong passed down to me in my adolescence. › Cultural motifs and contemporary issues surrounding Hong Kong. › Lee Friedlander’s unconventional photography. › Paul Sepuya’s use of layered illusions in his photography › Myeongsoo Kim’s photographs paired with sculptural references. How would you describe the visual language in your art? My work in this series largely communicates through visual metaphors and allusions that suggest different ideas around the content. Modular sequences are juxtaposed to tell a story of my father and I’s journey through the myths, realities, and interspaces of Hong Kong.
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Where do you see your art going in the future? Where do you hope for it to go? I envision my art practice will focus on exploring mixed-race experiences. My aspirations are to pioneer a visual language that is uniquely mixed-race and create spaces to discuss and raise awareness for our experiences and issues.
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Kylie Newcomb is a performer, sculptor, writer and photo-videographer. Within the study of ecology, ancient rites, rituals, and shamanism...
Her words and gestures tell a tale of isolation; a wild othering of the self. In a world built for us to sit outside of, the magic and power of the earth has been deemed supernatural and Not of this world. We have grown accustomed to the predictable and mechanical. We have forgotten the definition of safe. Let us regenerate the social tissues torn by conflicts arising from distinctions of status and discrepant structural normalities. End of the use of your inside voice.
@kyliehoneycomb kynstud.io
Kylie Newcomb
There is an unconditional use of the body in Newcomb’s work. The body is her link, a pulsating conduit, indicating a place that is here and elsewhere. A body neutralized on a sexual and erotic level, A body rendered symbolic.
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How would you describe the visual language in your art? I deeply wish to understand and to be understood; my work is based in the tension between wondering and knowing. That frustrated, visceral internal shifting. I am waving at you. I am dancing with you, but you are holding a mirror while we move. How did you land on photography as your primary medium? All mediums may live inside of the photographic. The camera allows you to capture and contain and itemize and immortalize. The photograph may contain a sculpture, a painting, a performance, a secret...it is the shellac of the art world. It binds and unifies and encapsulates. To understand seeing opens new perspectives in all areas of creation.
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When you were a kid, did you have the sense of what sort of creative path your life might take? When I was little I was going to win American Idol. I was to sing to the country of love and peace, but I began singing at restaurants and neighbors’ birthday parties. Now I sing quietly to myself to calm my breathing. Now I feel like I pulsate. I was born into performance and I sing and I dance through this. I sing and I dance for my own peace.
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I am transporting the viewer to a space that simultaneously exists and does not exist. My photographs in conversation with sculptural aspects, archival family photographs and collage often point to a recognizable theme or subject without providing the specifics. A photograph of folded-over marsh grass creates a dream-like space that I know and feel as though I could touch, yet the viewer has never been there. Use of color Polaroids decorated with distortions creates an aesthetic of the imperfection of replication as beauty. Observing the work in its entirety engages feelings of nostalgia and intimacy and the sensation of recalling a memory. I use landscapes of the eastern coast as a placeholder for memories to exist (the flow of water, a collection of stones, a field of grass) and disrupt the repetition with placeholders of my memories there.
@ _ patrickowings patrickowings. format.com
Patrick Owings
In this body of work, This is God’s Country. Why Set it On Fire & Make it Look Like Hell?, I revisit locations that held significance to my family and I growing up in an attempt find a sense of identity through catharsis. Being both queer and an identical twin, I’ve struggled in my adulthood to establish a sense of self and belonging in these Maryland landscapes and marsh-lands that raised me. Through the exploration of the landmarks that exemplify unrestrained adolescence and ephemeral beauty, I am claiming authorship over my memories and bridging the gap between who I was and who I am becoming.
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Did you know right away what this project would become?
What inspires you?
Absolutely not! My creative process usually begins with a single image, whether it’s archival or one of my own, that inspires a frenzy of frantic art making. After months of trial & error, experimenting with different processes, pages & pages of horribly disorganized sketches, high speed pacing around my apartment, and a couple screaming matches with a printer at 2AM, a body of work comes to fruition.
I’m constantly inspired by my family, friends and the Richmond art community. Everything I make and do is because of the constant support, feedback and critiques from my loved ones. Thank you to the faculty and students of VCUarts photo & film, my parents, my sisters, my brother, my friends and my g-dad for everything I was, am and will be. Enjoy Life!
If you could make collaborative work with anyone, who would you work with? Without hesitation I’d have to say Xavier Dolan. All of his films inspire me in more ways than one, specifically I Killed My Mother (‘09), Tom at the Farm (‘13) and Mommy (‘14). If he’s not willing to collab that’s fine, I’d settle for a hug and a chat over some quiches.
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@â&#x20AC;&#x160;dalaiami amipalm.com
Aamina Palmer
<p>
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<img src=“images/ artist-ap.jpg”>
Aamina Palmer, Gallery Director visual artist working with digital eyes
Aamina Palmer (°1997, Greensboro, NC, United States) makes photos and media art. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, Palmer often creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. Play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation. Her photos feature coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections which make it possible to revise art history and, even better, to complement it. Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies. By using an ever-growing archive of found documents to create autonomous artworks, she reflects on the closely related subjects of archive and memory. This often results in an examination of both the human need for ‘conclusive’ stories and the question whether anecdotes ‘fictionalise’ history.
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Her works are an investigation of concepts such as authenticity and objectivity by using an encyclopaedic approach and quasi-scientific precision and by referencing documentaries, ‘fact-fiction’ and popular scientific equivalents. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, she formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works. The thought processes, which are supposedly private, highly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream worlds, are frequently revealed as assemblages. Her works are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middle class mentality in which recognition plays an important role. Aamina Palmer currently lives and works in Richmond, VA. written via 500 letters
other designed things:
show cards
exhibition catalog
mock pricelist
IRL shirts
show posters
RESOURCES
iPhone and Canon Camera Adobe Photoshop Maya Makerbot Replicator 5th Gen Makerbot Replicator + Talk to Translator 500 letters
AR filter
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This work explores the flattened language of photography and the web and the 3d language of extrusion and 3d printing.
Translations
â&#x20AC;&#x153;A visual conversation between artist and computer. The translation of images to and from 3D. Using depth maps and the human eye to catalog and archive noteworthy sights.â&#x20AC;?
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What are the qualities or skills that make you good at what you do? I am very detail oriented which helps me spot the photos I want to take and tend to make work using processes I was curious about and wanted to learn more about. I also am not usually set in making one thing at a time, so I can have one project with many parts, which helps me not feel stuck when one part isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t going to plan. How would you describe the visual language in your art? My art speaks in patterns, code, and in human-machine hybrids. Its language is chaotic and orderly at the same time. You may need a translator, but it also just makes sense.
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Where do you see your art going in the future? Hopes? In the future I would like to continue experimenting with combining media, possibly make a font, some AR stuff... I have a list of things I want to make. I hope to make those and lots more, and honestly just have fun making.
find a desktop and follow me to
dcodega
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a llery.com
some mockups of the planned pop-up installation
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the handmade gallery website
In my ongoing body of work The Sunbathers, I create unfixable images with waxed negatives, turmeric, and week long exposures to direct sunlight. The series features indistinct figures sunbathing on lawns, eventually transforming into bold yellow color fields as they are re-exposed to UV light. The sunbathers appear blissfully unaware of their demise or simply apathetic. Although originally begun in 2018 in response to my fear of death and environmental collapse, the series became an oddly fitting visual for the COVID-19 crisis. In our time of social distancing during a global pandemic, these isolated figures appear to be enjoying moments of leisure– even as the world burns around them. Creating impermanent objects through photographic methods undermines the common purposes of photography– to freeze, to preserve, to hoard. This manic obsession with ownership increasingly felt deeply unhealthy to me. I began to seek out a way to make photography experiential, tactile, and poetic. The anthotype process, being unstable and impermanent, appealed to my desire to create this new hybridized type of photographic work. As the image is constantly deteriorating, viewers may have several different experiences with the work: pristine and crisp, faded, or blank. The faded block of color then becomes an artifact of what image was once there, leaving viewers with only the memory of what they had seen.
@ rebecca.renton
Rebecca Renton
Oscillating between deep sincerity and irony, my work aims to process ephemerality, chaos, leisure, and doom. Influenced by the lightning speed at which contemporary culture moves, I utilize labor intensive and time consuming processes which result in a fleeting, rapidly decaying art-object. My processes have become compulsive, experimental, and a mode of liberation as I learn to embrace transience within fine art.
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How did you land on photography as your primary medium? I trained very seriously in classical ballet from ages 4 to 16, and photographers would always come to our school to take promotional or documentary photos––it was so fascinating to me. When I left the school, I stumbled into photography as my new creative outlet. I think I was drawn to the medium’s technical nature, it seemed there was this sense of structure: right and wrong–much like ballet. However, I really came to love photography once I became comfortable with experimenting and breaking that convention. It’s still a relatively young medium, and I think there’s a lot to explore within it. If you could make collaborative work with anyone, who would you work with? I’m a pop culture junkie, so probably someone like Paris Hilton or all the contestants on The Bachelor. I would also say Danny Trejo, but that’s just because I want to hang out with him. Maybe we could all do something together!
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What do you do when you’re creatively stuck? We’re living in a very odd fever dream, and I try to take time to closely observe and think critically about American/Western culture. Truth really is stranger than fiction, and work isn’t created in a vacuum.
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MEDUSA
Medusa represents the objectifying look, the gaze, of the Other, that which objectifies and takes away Self. If one looks at something, Sartre says,”the one who looks is the center of consciousness.” The one who looks controls the world of a particular scene. But if, while looking, the looker is looked on by another, he becomes not only a being in and for itself but an objectified self for the Other. In this case, that Self that belongs to the recipient of the look is different from the Self seen by the Other, and, as Hazel Barnes in “The Look of the Gorgon (1974) explains: “The Other’s Look reveals to me that I am not alone in the world.” That might be all right in itself until I realize that now “the world is no longer my world.” In short, the Other’s look might deny my own freely organized world, therefore reducing me permanently to a hard stone-like object. The only solution to this problem is to assert one’s existence by making the self-defining choice of looking at the Other and, in so doing, neutralizing what is symbolized by the Gorgon’s life-denying look. This is the existentialist’s understanding of the only possible role of the post-Romantic alienated individual.” David Leeming, Medusa: In the Mirror of Time, 2013, 60-63.
@ lisa_sadler
Lisa Sadler
In Being and Nothingness (1943), Jean-Paul Sartre brings Medusa into his world of existentialist philosophy. The ‘petrification in in-itself by the Other,’ he says, is "the profound meaning of the myth of Medusa". The Other here is any person who looks at another, making the recipient of the look, the in-itself,” feel objectified– deindividualized– to the extent that his subjectivity has been petrified.
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What inspires you? My mother, my dreams, and the earth are what inspire me the most in my life. My mom was the sunshine that brightened everyone’s path that she encountered. Her encouragement and her love are the main reasons I push myself to succeed in everything I set out to do. Although she is no longer physically with me, her essence always consumes my mind and my psyche, and her wisdom is often whispering, continuously reminding me who I am. My dreams are the representations of which I connect my past and my future. Searching out their purposes and correlating ancient tales from long ago, my life is a deja vu’ of reflections of memories trying to find their way back home. The world and everything within it, nature, and its life-force, the beauty, and the peace are my inherited possessions of aspiration. The way the trees soothe my soul and clear the buzzing of irrelevant happenings that I often get caught up in - and the wind that makes the leaves dance and sing with the birds and their song. What do you do when you are creatively stuck? Usually, when I am creatively stuck, it’s because I am exhausting myself, or I am following someone else’s vision. The latter of the two is the most difficult because usually, it has me examining my artistic ability and brings my self-esteem way down the rabbit hole. My art is an extension of who I am, how I believe, and where I came from. To overcome these barriers, I usually need to pause, cut off from the world and everyone around me, and exist in the moment. Sometimes just sitting outside and being in nature is the best remedy to clear my head and help me focus. Other times, I need to remind myself of who I am and readjust my reflections. It’s when I stop trying to satisfy everyone else and start catering myself, that I get back into my groove.
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Did you know right away what this project would become? My thesis on Medusa started with a dream. I was visited by this beautiful woman that came to guard me, her face was a mask of plaited hair like a snake, large braids that blanketed her skin, and her eyes, were penetrating and piercing blue like ice. I searched her out in ancient writings and was reminded of the similarities. How so many different religions and myths share the same account or a variation of it. I spent the year gathering everything I could find, and the primary focus led me to a different narrative. This was a tale about empowerment and protection. An ancient story about a beautiful high priestess that safeguarded the temple of the goddess Athena and how the patriarch attempted to defile it. Not only was it about empowerment and liberation from the gaze of men, but it was also about discovering who I am, and the masks I wear to live this life. My work evolved into hundreds of eyes, protruding onto the viewer, making them now the object of the installation and powerless; and I created a snake out of my uniform I wear in my other life, my mask that I put on to gain my power. The further I examined all aspects of the stories and meanings that had been hidden or changed over the centuries, Medusa appeared in everything I came upon. She was everywhere, and she was not the monster that man had made her out to be, but the protector of us all.
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My mom is going to read this and say, “un’altra mostra contro la religione, Francesca?”. Sì Mamma... Lilith serves as a very admirable and relatable biblical figure to me. Her being made from the earth made her immediately aware of her equal footing with Adam. Her rejection of Adam solidifies her stance, while also queering her as a character. Her leaving the garden of Eden serves as liberation rather than banishment.
@ lesbobaroque
Fran Shapiro
The installation this was supposed to be viewed as is no longer feasible, therefore I don’t know what this series means to me anymore. It was supposed to be about my struggle with wanting to excommunicate myself from the church while having religious family and celebrating religious traditions.
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How has your view/perspective on art and photography changed due to being in art school?
Did you know right away what this project would become?
I didn’t have the ability to think conceptually about my work at all before going to art school. I thought I wanted to make art just to make things that are aesthetically pleasing. Now I don’t feel confident producing something if I don’t have strong conceptual backing to it. Why would I make something if I don’t have anything to say?
I had a really clear image of how I wanted to create my installation initially and I knew I wanted to shoot the story of Lilith. I had a lot of issues creating the story of Lilith because this was my first time creating a narrative series, and there is a lot of action in the story. I was really fixated on making something that didn’t seem over the top or gaudy, and I was stuck because of that for a long time. In the end, my initial idea for my installation changed because of my photos. I guess I thought I knew what it would become?
How would you describe the visual language in your art? I like world-building/narrative a lot. I usually compose scenes that are fairly easy to read with the meat of the scene being pretty obvious. In this sense I buried Lilith to embody her birth. In another case I poured gold paint on my subject to simulate an opulent baptism. I have no shame in saying I’m bad at reading art so the work I make is easy to read.
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Let Amorphous transcend you into a universe where free floating glass molecules are beings, and blacklight is the sun, no matter where you are in life’s trek, when viewing this work you become amorphic too...
@ steinackerart
Jasmine Steinacker
Jasmine Steinacker is an abstract based Photographer also skilled in the art of Glass Blowing. Jasmine works with hot glass in tandem with photography. The work, Amorphous takes life in archival inkjet prints adhered to 3-dimensional panel installations that house glowing glass molecules. This exhibit has been shown at the Anderson Gallery for the Society of Photographic Education’s Conference in Richmond, Plant Zero and featured in the photography department at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Showcase Gallery.
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What is on your studio playlist? A whole bunch of Aurora songs! What did you take away from your time in art school? As you grow intellectually, skillfully, and physically, your art follows... What inspires you? The neverending learning process. In theory, you can pick any type of medium and become proficient, there is no limit to what you can make for the rest of your life. What do you do when you’re creatively stuck? Pick up a hobby, anything, art related or not, and explore. Your urge to create will come back when your mind and body have found equilibrium; Sometimes that means forgetting about ‘making art’ and focusing on other activities.
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The project consists of thirty anthotype prints of my grandmother’s collection of coffee creamers that she purchased or, more often, swiped, from restaurants throughout her young adult life, shown with corresponding writings. After an anthotype is exposed, the sun will continue to bleach the pigment. The way in which the prints are handled and stored is instrumental to their preservation or degradation, similar to the role we play in the stewardship of memories. In pairing the prints with fragments of text, I attempt to rebuild my grandmother’s fading past. The writings vary in truthfulness from direct quotes of hers to stories I’ve heard to entirely imagined vignettes. Through combining fact and fiction, I am exploring how a life lived and mostly forgotten can be preserved.
@ audreystemann
Audrey Stemann
My work explores the relationship between loss and gain, stewardship of memory and the act of recreation. The title of my thesis, When we were little, so little I don’t remember, comes from a story my grandmother told me about he father teaching her to swim in the bay. She tells this story despite having no memory of the real event, it’s a story she’s been told, and her repetition parallels my instinct to preserve a past neither of us can recall. I grapple with this idea by writing my own histories for her objects and, by extension, for my Grandmother.
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How did you land on photography as your primary medium? I first wanted to take photographs because I loved looking at photographs. I checked out large format photo books from my local library in high school. I wanted to take photographs that I loved as much as the ones I admired. I remember “discovering” Stephen Shore and avidly looking through his portfolios online. The image Ginger Shore, Causeway Inn, Tampa, Fla., Nov. 17, 1977. is the photograph that ultimately led me to study art.
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What are five things that influenced your thesis project? › The cinnamon sugar toast my grand mother made for my sister and I › Jane by Maggie Nelson › My grandparent’s archive of photos › Working at a flower market › Rirkrit Tiravanija
Recipe. One head of blended chard. Have you eaten it in soup? It takes a day in the sun to tan her skin and burn mine.
After school at Saint Helena’s Catholic Elementary she ran through the snow with Rose and Edna. She’d fallen a few times and the snow in her shoes had started to melt.
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They had been asking me to meet him and he happened to be there, so they introduced us and I can still remember seeing him on the couch. So I said, “How do you do?” but I didn’t stay long because I had ice-cream.
Before, she wouldn’t let me read her letters to Pop-pop. Is it okay now that she can’t remember?
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When your curled toes touched the sand, the storm clouds rolled away. I don’t believe in magic.
My twin sister and I told my grandmother to open a restaurant that served only cinnamon toast. We really believed she considered it, at least I did.
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My father taught us to swim; he’d take us back to the bay. When we were little, so little I don’t remember.
Here she is on the beach at Stone Harbor, wearing a strapless dress she made and holding one saddle shoe and wearing the other. Her posture is slouched, profile to the camera.
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She talks much more about him than herself. But she is just as self centered as anyone else.
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I found a note that said “page 57” in your script. Should I always read page 57?
The year Easter fell on my birthday we played croquet in her backyard and avoided the birdbath and the spot with the huge puddle.
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Do I remember the Easter on March 31st or Do I remember seeing a picture of my sister and I in Easter dresses in front of a birthday cake on her screened in porch?
Grandmom introduced me to a new friend at the memory unit and faltered when she got to my name.
When I texted I wonder how long she had been there; my mom replied don’t know. She’s been found on floor next to bed several times in last month or so.
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I can use a coin or a flower or an 8 ball to answer questions. Should I?
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Where is your fake plant that played the jitterbug?
Davis’ latest work is an installation consisting of a tent-like structure made from rebar tie wire. The outside of the structure is covered with wires attached to broken mirror fragments and empty water bottles. When the viewer walks around the piece, shining a light onto the structure, the walls come to life with shadows and reflections created by the observer. Another part of the installation is a life-size display of broken mirror attached to the wall against a corner of the room to facilitate audience interaction. When the light is shone on the mirror, it reflects onto the other side of the corner. This piece allows the onlookers to view themselves in a fragmented state and then create reflections from those fragments. The plastic water bottles are a play on the traditional bottle trees that can be seen driving around old southern neighborhoods in Virginia. According to the folklore surrounding bottle trees, evil spirits find their way into the bottles and then get stuck. Affixed to Davis’ wire tent, the bottles serve two functions, to protect the artist, who sits inside of the structure and to create fascinating shadows onto the surrounding walls. After her father’s death in February '19, she was compelled to make work that explores his fascination with lights, shadows, and reflections. This served as a way for the artist to comfort her inner child by creating an environment that her father would be enthused by. The other prevailing element of Davis’ work are fractured mirrors. Davis uses this medium to represent the long-term effects of early childhood trauma. Many survivors, including the artist, find themselves with a shattered identity that they must learn to manage. Once shattered, the parts of the identity may never fit back together in their original state, but each part can reflect light and beauty. By utilizing the jagged mirror to reflect light, the artist is acknowledging each of her parts and conveying to them her willingness to work together as a team while navigating through life.
Tara’ Davis
Tara’ Davis (b. 1975) is an emerging artist from Northern Virginia. Through her sculptural work, she explores themes such as identity, protection, and survivorship. Her work is an expression of the various emotions and reactions resulting from childhood abuse. Davis takes the photographic approach of using light and shadows to produce literal and conceptual pieces, some of which are interactive. Through her art, she allows herself to be vulnerable and reveal parts of her identity that would not otherwise have an outlet.
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What is on your studio playlist? In a Sentimental Mood , Unforgettable , When I Fall In Love , Smile , and Misty. What did you take away from your time in art school? Make the materials my own and embrace the creative process. For me, making art is more about the process than it is about the product. What are five things that influenced your thesis project? The urge to work with rebar tie wire, my father’s death, my pursuit of mental health, the desire to express parts of myself that feel suppressed, a fascination with shadows.
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Leaning on the Everlasting Arms is a series about anticipatory grief; it is also about my own grandparents, my relationship to them and their relationship with each other. The work involves photographs taken during various visits over a six-month period that illustrate the effects of my grandmother’s declining health and the necessity for loved ones to become caretakers. Featured as well are several writings that offer my reflections on those visits and provide deeper insight into my relationship with them. The creation of this project is rooted in a deep empathy that revealed itself gradually as I got older, but was fully unearthed during a trip to visit my family in England. I have grown up surrounded by photographs of the English countryside, watching home videos from many visits to the UK, and hearing countless stories of times gone by. But over the years, my grandmother’s health has declined, to the point now where she would not be able to handle the strain of the trip. I had known this but not fully grasped just how devastating their situation was until one night at my great uncle’s house, after having a long conversation about the very real possibility of my grandparents never seeing their family again. In recent years, my family have repeatedly heard the argument from my grandfather that they will finally do those things they’ve been meaning to do once my grandmother “gets put right”. It seemed that there was always an ailment to recover from, an injury that needed to heal - but it has become apparent that there will not be another upswing. I began to feel the heavy weight of sadness and guilt and panic. Although they're both still very much alive, I cried for my own loss of them, as well as their loss of themselves as individuals and of each other as partners in life. I could not stop thinking that they simply did not deserve this ending that was unfolding. But nature does not consider what is fair, just as mourning does not always begin when it is supposed to. This project has revealed itself as a form of healing for me– it has helped me to confront something that I have avoided for a long time. Grief is nonsensical and endlessly cruel. My hope is that someone might see this series and feel understood, and perhaps some solace in mutual sadness.
@_caroline_thompson_ caroline-thompson.com
Caroline Thompson
Death can come at any time – it can be sudden, shocking, and is almost always devastating. In describing the death of her husband due to a heart attack, Joan Didion said, “Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends”. But what about death in a state of imminence? What about that loss we have time to dread?
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What are five things that influenced your thesis project? I found myself repeatedly looking at Kaylynn Deveny’s work, Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home series, Colin Gray’s book In Sickness and in Health, and Christopher Nunn’s Falling into the Day. I was also heavily influenced by Joan Didion’s Blue Nights– it is devastating and gorgeous. Did you know right away what this project would become? Definitely not. I think my reason for making the project has remained the same throughout the entire process, but it was initially going to be a series of portraits of myself and my other family members photoshopped to look old. It was meant to be a source of empathy through caricature, but I struggled with it– I now know that struggle was caused by the fact that I was making the concept too easy to swallow, for the audience as well as myself.
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Modern urban development often causes people who are displaced to suffer from amnesia, making people forget what it is like. She often can only return home in dreams. Her hometown has interacted and influenced her. It is unrealistic to embrace the past when one’s consciousness cannot be integrated into the torrent of the past. Later, she started to use photography to restore some gradually blurred pictures and emotions. These things are not in the past, nor the present, but outside of time. Ruoqiong is a digital based photographer. Most of her photos include rivers and boulders; rivers will eventually return to the sea, and the boulder will survive in the wind and frost. She chose the images to be grey and greenish. Later, her shooting moved from outside work to inside; the direction of shooting also changed from a symbolic representation to a “remodeling” to build a new consciousness. From the passive search at the beginning to the spontaneous emergence of them, she selected photos which have something in common and put them together. This will make them interact and supplement each other.
@_lilywrq wangruoqiong.com
Ruoqiong Wang
Ruoqiong Wang is a photographer based in Richmond, VA and Ningbo, China, graduating from the photography department at Virginia Commonwealth University. Ruoqiong’s work includes portraits, still life, and life fragments.
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Do you think it’s important or useful to pay attention to what people say about your work? People’s feedback is important and sometimes useful to me. Photography is not only an art, but also considered with culture, humanities and society. Photographer is only a start, but my work is an individual. What do you do when you’re creatively stuck? Stop focusing on my work and watch something relaxing, or find other artists who may inspire me. How would you describe the visual language in your art? My thesis project is about myself. There are gray tone images, Chinese calligraphy and photo combinations inside it.
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Colophon Catalog Committee: Aamina Palmer Ryan Hill Audrey Stemann Brienna Kane Meagan Gallagher Designer Mia Navarro mianavarro.org @ m.n.shots Publisher BambooInk Type Meno Banner Condensed
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