NEWS
RECENT/UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS, SCREENINGS, PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS:
(click links in bold or see blog entries below for more info)
Recent and Upcoming Exhibitions:
- Invisible Architectures | Social Contracts, Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD, May 16-June 29, 2024 (curated by Doreen Bolger)
- Just as Your Ship's Drifting in They're Pushing Out the Tide, Tempus Volta, Tampa, FL, March 6-May 7, 2024 (curated by Jenal Dolson)
- Context 2024, Filter Photo, Chicago, IL, Mar. 22-Apr. 27, 2024 (curated by Sarah Kennel)
- Mapping Perspectives, Throughline, Houston, TX, Mar. 8-30, 2024 (curated by Samantha Johnston)
- In the Shadow of the Moon, Windgate Museum of Art, Hendrix College, Jan. 26-Apr. 13, 2024 (curated by Christian Cutler)
- What Has Been Will Be Again, SRO Gallery, Texas Tech University, Jan 10-Feb. 8, 2024
- SPE SC/SE Members Exhibition, Schley Gallery, Corn Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus State University, Columubus, GA (juried by Erin Dunn) October 10-21, 2023
- Infinite Weight/Present Histories: University of West Georgia 2023 National Juried Photography Exhibition, Vault Gallery, University of West Georgia, Newnan, GA (curated by Maria Kelly) Oct. 20-Nov. 17, 2023
- Once, Cleve Carney Museum of Art, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL, Oct. 7, 2023-Jan. 7, 2024
- Contextualize, Pavilion 333, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, June 16-18, 2023
- Between Life and Land: Identity, Kimball Art Center, Park City, UT, April 21-July 9, 2023
- Context 2023, Filter Photo, Chicago, IL, Mar. 10-Apr. 22, 2023
- What Has Been Will Be Again, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, Feb. 27-March 31, 2023
- Photo Now, Center for Photography at Woodstock Kingston, NY, Nov. 5, 2022-Feb. 5, 2023
Recent Select Publications:
- “What Has Been Will Be Again,” Southern Cultures
- “Slaying the vampire that is killing bats,” photographs for The Washington Post
- “Peyote as Earth Medicine: Examining How Symbolic Meanings Shape Experiences With Psychedelics” published in The British Journal of Criminology, featuring photographs from The Circle
- Upstreams Deadfalls, published by Deadfall Press
- “Biden’s renewable energy goals blow up against a painful WWII legacy,” photographs for The Washington Post
- Reckonings & Reconstructions published by UGA Press
- “Sex, Drugs, and Coercive Control: Gendered Narratives of Methamphetamine Use, Relationships, and Violence” photo essay published in Criminology, the first ever of its kind for the flagship social science journal
- “Visually Representing Rural: Ethics of Photographing Marginalized People in the Rural South” book chapter published in Research Methods for Rural Criminologists, Routledge
- “Protecting Stories: How Symbolic Boundaries Reduce Victimizationand Harmful Drug Use” published in Crime & Deliquency journal
- “What Has Been Will Be Again,” Study the South
- “Engaging Participants with Photographs: Conducting Photo-Elicitation Interviews with People Who Engage in Crime and Deviance” published in Journal of Criminal Justice Education
- “Changing Narratives of Intimate Partner Violence: A Longitudinal Photo-Ethnography” published in Conflict and Society journal
- What Has Been Will Be Again on Lenscratch
- Hellbender featured in the November 2021 issue of Vanity Fair Italia
Recent Select Awards:
- Utah Division of Arts & Museums Artist Career Advancement Award
- Utah State University Caine College of the Arts 2024 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award
- Utah State University Caine College of the Arts 2023 Faculty Researcher of the Year Award
- Gomma Black and White Awards, Finalist
- Once, Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Best in Show
- Urbanautica Institute Awards 2022, Winner (category: Anthropology & Territories)
- Filter Photo Contexts 2023 Juror’s Award, Honorable Mention
- 2022 Aftermath Project Grant finalist award
- 2021 Critical Mass TOP 50
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Libra, 26, from The Circle.
A new article, coauthored with Heith Copes, Curdajah Bonner, and Peter S. Hendricks and featuring photographs from the series, The Circle, has been published in the journal, Justice Quarterly. “Being Better People: Drug Using Careers and Peyote” combines photographs, interview texts, and analysis to understand how narratives, identities, and specific drugs shape experiences. The article is available to those with institutional access here. An abstract of the article is below.
The eight photographs published in the journal were made in collaboration with study participants, with each person directing where and how they were photographed as a means of visualizing their personal experiences with peyote.
Justice Quarterly was listed by Google Scholar in its most recent rankings as the top academic journal in the discipline of criminology.
Abstract:
Our aim is to understand how narratives relating to personal identities and specific drugs shape people’s drug using careers. To do this, we rely on data from a photo-ethnography of people who used peyote in ceremonial contexts in the Southern United States. We found that the desire to become better people plot stories at each stage of their careers. The hope of positive personal change (e.g. heal trauma or break addiction) often motivates decisions to try peyote, while those who continue using do so because they believe peyote has aided in personal growth. Some desist because the discomfort from the acute effects of peyote outweighs the long-term benefits. Others stop using do so because they believe peyote has helped them reach their goals and they no longer need to continue. Findings have implications for broader understandings of drug using careers.
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Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County, Ala.
A large scale Photo Tex installation of an image from What Has Been Will Be Again is included in the exhibition, Invisible Architectures | Social Contracts curated by Doreen Boyd at the Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, May 16-June 29. Press release is below.
INVISIBLE ARCHITECTURES | SOCIAL CONTRACTS
MARYLAND ART PLACE, Baltimore
May 16-June 29
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 16, 2024, 5-9pm
Maryland Art Place, in collaboration with COFAC CoLab Directors Dr. Kalima Young and Ada Pinkston, are excited to present "Invisible Architectures | Social Contracts." This exhibition explores the impact of geographic, economic, social, and institutional structures on personal relationships. This dynamic interdisciplinary art festival and Co-Lab sponsored project (Spring 2024) investigates the past, present and future directions social contracts may take. Join us on Thursday, May 16 from 5 pm to 9 pm for the opening reception taking place during the BROMO Art Walk with accompanying performances held on Friday, June 14.
About Invisible Architectures:
As we approach another election year in the United States, agreements about what is included in an American social contract continue to be up for debate.The term social contract started when philosophers from France to England started to think about the nature of humanity and the tensions that exist between the people who enact power and the people who do not. What are the agreed upon boundaries that exist within our social, family and political structures? How do these boundaries create or negate cognitive distance with what actually happens in any social theater? Artistic interventions have the potential to offer us much needed insights and possibilities for our collective future.
Exhibiting Artists:
Visual Art - Elizabeth Ashe, Samia, Bzioui, Se Jong Cho, Monique Crabb, Noël Da, Julianna Dail, Pack, G., Katie Gill-Harvey, Helen Glazer, QRCKY, Sanzi Kermes, Nate Larson, George Lorio, Dereck, Mangus, Kellan Marriott, Hope & Faith McCorkle, Claudia McDonough, Bruce, McKaig, Sasha-Loriene McClain, Lisa Moren, Pamela Thompson, Jamal Thorne, Jared Ragland, Agustin Rosa, and Heidi Younger.Video - Gabriel Bejarano, Nia Hampton, Jackie, Hoysted, Alexandra Garove, Patrick Riley, and Tima Aflitunov. Performances by - Jacob Budenz, Laure Drogoul, Sheila Gaskins, Nora Howell, Nigel Semaj, Peter Redgrave, VILLAGER, Move Move Collaborative, and Monsieur Zohore
Doreen Bolger Bio:
Doreen Bolger, retired Director of The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), served from 1998 to 2015. During her 17-year tenure, she led a successful $100 million fundraising campaign, oversaw BMA's renovation, implemented free admission, and transitioned the institution from a city agency to a private organization. Bolger holds a BA magna cum laude from Bucknell University, an MA from the University of Delaware, and a PhD from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Prior to her BMA role, she worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as Curator and Manager of the Henry R. Luce Center for American Art, Curator at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, TX, and served as Director of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Since retirement, Bolger has contributed to local arts organizations including: Creative Alliance, Maryland Citizens for the Arts, Maryland Art Place, and Woman’s Club of Roland Park; curated exhibitions in the co-curation of MICA’s 2015/2016 Graduate Exhibition; and gifted twenty works to the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. She also contributed to Bmore Art’s publication City of Artists Baltimore (2023).
About Invisible Architectures in Co-Lab:
The COFAC Co-Lab is an incubator for ideas, projects and collaboration. The lab is a home for interdisciplinary work. It's a hub where ideas can be cross-fertilized and put into motion. Designed as a space where fields of study are porous, the objective is to build new knowledge for an ever-evolving world. Professors Dr. Kalima Young, (Department of Electronic Media & Film) and Ada Pinkston (Department of Art + Design, Art History Art Education) were selected to be Towson University’s College of Fine Arts and Communication Co-Lab Directors from 2021-2024.About Maryland Art Place Maryland Art Place (MAP) inspires, supports, and encourages artistic expression through innovative programming, exhibitions, and educational opportunities while recognizing the powerful impact art can have on our community. MAP creates a dynamic environment for artists of our time to engage the public by nurturing and promoting new ideas. MAP has served as a critical resource for contemporary art in the Mid-Atlantic since 1981.
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Works from What Has Been Will Be Again and Snowbird are on view in concurrent exhibitions in Houston, Chicago, and Tampa. Gallery press releases for each show are below.
MAPPING PERSPECTIVES
THROUGHLINE COLLECTIVE, Houston
March 8-30
Throughline will open its first juried exhibition, MAPPING PERSPECTIVES, on Friday, March 8 at 3909 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002, held in conjunction with the biennial photography festival FOTOFEST HOUSTON. An opening reception will take place the same evening, from 6 to 9pm; a special celebration for the juror is planned for the following Friday, March 15, from 6-9pm. Juried by Samantha Johnston, Executive Director & Curator of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC), in Denver, Colorado, the exhibition features a broad range of lens-based work by artists from across the United States.
The theme of this year’s FotoFest is “Critical Geography”, which seeks to re-examine traditional Western and historical understandings of geography while expanding these investigations to new realms. In the spirit of this theme, Mapping Perspectives explores power structures, inequalities, and dominant ideologies within and across marked boundaries. Given we live in a world where influence comes from more than geographical coordinates, Mapping Perspectives examines how photographs capture ways in which culture, society, economics, politics, and religion shape our environments.
Participating Artists: Tya Anthony, Barron Bixler, Christa Blackwood, Leah Dyjak, Jesse Egner, Farima Fooladi, Dana Fritz, Gabriela Gamboa, Edward Gia, Vidya Giri, Megan Jacobs, Sam Jentsch, Bree Lamb / Muscle Memory Collective, Morgan Levy, Diane Meyer, Nancy Newberry, Caroline Philippone, Vann Powell, Jared Ragland, Laurie Smith, Chang-Ching Su, Kathleen Tunnell Handel, Johanna Warwick
Juror’s Statement: Boundaries extend far beyond lines on a map. They encompass power structures, inequalities, and dominant ideologies that mold our lived environments and influence our daily interactions. As you navigate this exhibition, I invite you to consider how boundaries shape your own lived experience. What measured boundaries are deconstructed when we seek to find the forces that connect us?-Samantha Johnston, Executive Director & Curator, Colorado Photographic Arts Center
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CONTEXT 2024
FILTER PHOTO, Chicago
March 22-April 27
Filter Photo is pleased to announce Context 2024, our tenth annual survey exhibition of contemporary photography. This year's exhibition was juried by Sarah Kennel, the Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and features the work of 23 artists.
"We are inundated on the daily with an ocean of images, yet the clarity, finesse, and power of the photographs in Context 2024 speak to a collective desire for making work that means something, that can cut across the blaring noise. Across portraiture, documentary, landscapeand experimental work, the artists in this exhibition show us that in these troubled and troubling times, photography retains the capacity to reveal, to connect, to delight, and to bear witness, even as the medium continues to evolve and shape-shift. The resurgence of history as a key photographic concern shapes several documentary projects that trace the origins of our collective myth-making; others bear witness to who we are and how we live, both together and apart from each other. Wry, lucid, and penetrating portraits and self-portraits powerfully assert presence and subjectivity and invite us to see identity formation as a subtle, complex, and shifting phenomenon. Some reveal cracks in the American dream, others chart complex global histories, and others still link us to our attachments and our losses, both personal and collective. Pictures, of course, accrue meaning over time and through social engagement. Several artists cannily reuse found imagery or draw on established pictorial traditions to expand meaning. Some interrogate or interrupt photographic conventions and materials as a way to call attention to urgent political, social and environmental issues. Other artists carefully conjure an intimate, tangible sense of place, inviting us to both consider our relationship to our environment and imagine alternative ways of being."
—Sarah Kennel, Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center for Works on Paper, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA)
Dr. Sarah Kennel joined the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in 2021 as the inaugural Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center for Works on Paper. A specialist in nineteenth and twentieth-century photography, Kennel has curated, published, and presented widely on topics ranging from nineteenth-century French photography and historic photographic processes, to European modernism and understudied women photographers. She has also written extensively on the relationship between painting and photography in nineteenth-century France and completed a dissertation on the relationship between dance and the visual arts in early twentieth-century culture. Before joining VMFA, Kennel held positions at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Dr. Kennel launched her curatorial career at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Kennel holds a doctorate and a Master of Arts in art history from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University.
Artists: Sara Abbaspour, Jimmie Allen, Peter Cochrane, Yvette Marie Dostani, Matt Eich, Charlotta Hauksdottir, Khim Mata Hipol, R. J. Kern, Tom Lau, Denise Laurinaitis, Tanya Lunina, Andriana Nativio, Laura Allen Noel, Luigino (Louie) Palu, Jason Pevey, John Prince, Jared Ragland, Astrid Reischwitz, Kathryn Rodrigues, Maggie Shannon, Forrest Simmons, Mitchell Squire, Constance Thalken, Brad Ziegler
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Just as Your Ship's Drifting in They're Pushing Out the Tide
TEMPUS VOLTA, Tampa
March 6-May 2
Juried by Jenal Dolson, Just as Your Ship's Drifting in They're Pushing Out the Tide will showcase works from artists Gina Lee Robins, Amber Toplisek, Ian Wilson, Justin Quaid, Brandin Vance, Jared Ragland, Amy Jones and Elizabeth Molitor in TEMPUS VOLTA. Artists were selected from a national open call for works from all backgrounds and by mediums that explore themes of uncertainty, resilience, and change.
About the Juror: Jenal Dolson lives and works in Chicago as an artist and arts professional. She received her MFA in 2020 from the University of South Florida, and her B.A. in 2007 from the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada). She has participated in residencies at The Dorland Mountain Arts Colony (Temecula, CA), Tempus Projects (Tampa, FL), Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto, ON), and the Vermont Studio Centre (Johnson, VT). Recent exhibitions include the Roper Gallery, Frostburg State University (Frostburg, MA) and the Kimball Arts Center (Chicago, IL). She currently holds the position of gallery director at ANDREW RAFACZ (Chicago, IL) and has a studio space at Mana Contemporary, in Pilsen (Chicago, IL.)
Tempus Projects is dedicated to nurturing established and emerging local, national, and international artists through exhibitions, collaborations, residencies, and events. The non-profit organization promotes artists working in all media, and develops, organizes, and hosts award-winning exhibitions and events within a range of media and a varied survey of artists. Tempus Projects provides a space for culturally diverse artistic expression, dialogue, and reflection contributing to the visual arts community in the Tampa Bay region.
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A photo essay featuring works from What Has Been Will Be Again and introductory text by longtime collaborator Catherine Wilkins, Ph.D, is published in the latest issue of Southern Cultures, a peer-reviewed journal by the University of North Carolina’s Center for the Study of the American South.
Gothic South (Vol. 29, No. 4) is guest edited by Kinitra D. Brooks, Ph.D, the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies at Michigan State University’s Dept. of English. Brooks specializes in the study of black women, genre fiction, and popular culture.
With features including a conversation with National Book Award winnder Jesmyn Ward, photo essay by Kristine Potter, fiction by Rebecca Bengal, the issue unpacks the Gothic South, exploring its haints, hollers, and hoodoo.
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