Admist from  April 12, 2021 to May 15, 2021 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Emily Pan

In the exhibit of Admist, I found myself exploring a different perspective of art than before. The exhibit is unique in a variety of ways but the most noticeable characteristic is the high number of 3D art pieces. As a theatre major studying lighting, this factor caught my attention. Before, lighting design always collaborated with the motion of performance, but through this exhibit, I discovered its significance in 3D art pieces.

Among all the pieces in the exhibit, Transition / Resurrection by Martin Gonzales is an excellent example of light collaboration with art. The piece is a combination of foam, cardboard, resin, paint, wires, and flags in a mountainous structure surrounding an inner space with a wired chair. Gonzales explains that the piece is him trying to build shelter in a world of “faultiness and heartquakes”. While the piece itself could be presented entirely covered in light, the piece can also be brought to life by using light purposefully. In lighting design, there are about five aims of light including selective visibility, revelation of form, information, composition, and mood. For Gonzales’ piece, selective visibility and revelation of form would definitely be most significant in supporting it.

Selective visibility refers to using light to determine the focus of the audience and creating a path of light. While every part is important to the whole, the light in the gallery highlights small moments and emphasizes where the attention of the audience remains for a brief moment longer. These moments include the small plank at the very peak of the structure that balances a small figurine. The extra time the audience gives to the part introduces the figurine as an object different from the rest and possibly significant to the artist. In addition to emphasizing moments for the audience’s attention, occasionally, light is used to create a path of vision. As a viewer walks around the structure, the light reflects off the tip of the white branch, and then slowly travels all the way downwards as the viewer continues walking around. It’s as if the light reflecting off the branch is both guiding and encouraging the viewer to keep seeking and to keep exploring throughout the structure. 

Revelation of form refers to using light to reveal form. For a piece created from cardboard and various materials, texture is certainly important. When first stepping towards the piece, the viewer would immediately notice a sharp jagged spike coming far out of the structure. The light that highlights this part is coming from a strong side in which half of the piece lies in shadow and half in light. Being half in shadow emphasizes its form and shape, the shadow almost outlines what exists in view. The angle of the light also highlights the unique texture of the spike itself, the rope covered in paint creates slight shadows to reveal its ridges. As a result, this part of the structure is lit in such a way that it introduces the viewer to two important motifs in the piece; shape and texture. 

The use of lighting goes beyond these examples and I encourage any viewer to continue to explore art through various different perspectives, whether from your own background or from this one. The significance of light also exists beyond just this piece, every piece in the exhibit is lit in a  different way that highlights a different aspect. Light collaborates and supports the purpose and hopes of the art, and it helps us to better understand the art.

Martin Gonzales’ work is included in Amidst at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park

For more information on Amidst and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/stamp_gallery

Amidst from April 12, 2021 to May 15, 2021 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Zainab Kazaure 

The process of growth after trauma is not linear. That is a lesson that runs through my mind time and time again in my own attempt to blossom as an individual. Alyssa Imes’ Post-Traumatic Growth, with its fabric and poured cast iron medium represents perfectly the imperfection that is growth and how it exists in different ways for everyone.

The various colored and sized piles of fabric that lay in front of a wall covered in poured cast iron pieces work to help us think of our own bigger picture. Like growth, there are many different parts, not, “smooth or stable,” but instead with, “peaks and valleys,” as the artist says. We see these peaks and valleys and contrasting textures in the work. The biggest similarity between it and growth is that all the different pieces come together in the end to make a beautiful bigger picture. 

Even though growth has many different parts, which can vary in appearance and nature, the ups and downs of it and our peaks and valleys are what makes us who we are. As we take the time to work through our trauma, as tedious as it can be, we are able to build ourselves up – putting the pieces of the story of who we are and who we hope to be together until we become as whole as Imes’ piece.

Alyssa Imes’ work is included in Amidst at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park

For more information on Amidst and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/stamp_gallery.

Amidst from April 12, 2021 to May 15, 2021 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Helen Feng

Walking past the gallery, it is hard not to be captivated by the artwork in the Admist exhibition. Including piles of paper, castings that look like lips, and piles of fibers on the floor, this exhibit is far from conventional. The massive, colorful sculpture titled Transition/ Resurrection by Martin Gonzales is enthralling and takes you back to a time when you felt young and free.

With brightly colored flags and crisscrossing planks, the artist created a dome that feels like a contraption that a child would climb all over, and then safely play inside without any worries of growing older. Gonzales describes this work as a way of him trying to build a shelter in this inarguably imperfect world that we live in. His work reflects the way he has to become a parent to himself while protecting the child inside of himself. 

Looking at this work excites the inner child in yourself, the one that feels like it left a long time ago, but really they just have not been out to play in a while. Gonzales uses red alphabet letters to create a playful sense as they are scattered all over the piece. After viewing this piece, it almost feels like you forgot colors could be this vibrant and that so many colors exist. 

For more information on Amidst and related events, visit https://thestamp.umd.edu/stamp_gallery.

In Focus: Representations of Black Womanhood from February 8, 2021 to March 27, 2021 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Fiona Yang

Spoken word is defined by Parmar and Bain as a contemporary art form with elements of verse, music, and theater. The art form draws directly from elements of African-American culture: spirituals, blues, jazz, protest songs, and hip-hop culture. The musical and oral tradition of African-American culture goes back centuries. Darwin T. Turner asserts in his paper, African-American History and the Oral Tradition, that “[oral literature and oral history] are well-established as a part of Black culture.” Turner, a prominent scholar who spent his career fighting for the recognition of African-American literature, points out that early on, there would have been no alternative to the oral tradition. Slaves were not taught to read or write, and writing implements – paper, pen, and ink – were prohibitively expensive. Even if they could write, Turner reasons, it would have been unwise to record their thoughts about their histories and experiences in a form that could be found by their masters. Instead, African-American history in the time of slavery can be traced through folktales and folksongs, the most notable of which were spirituals. Spirituals “dealt with religious themes – faith, freedom, hope and salvation.” In addition, the spiritual often contained coded messages advising other slaves on how to escape bondage (Brown).

While spoken word was preceded by spirituals, it draws direct influence from later movements such as the the Civil Rights Movement. During the Civil Rights Movement, prominent authors, musicians, and performers – including but not limited to Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay – created work centered around the African-American experience, drawing on the rich oral tradition of African-American history. It is within the Civil Rights Movement that the most relevant predecessor of the spoken word is found. During the 60s and 70s, organizations such as the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam diverged from other civil rights groups to form the Black Power Movement. The Black Power Movement was a revolutionary movement that believed in racial equality and economic empowerment through an explicitly militant lens. The Black Arts Movement, the “aesthetic and spiritual sister” of the Black Power Movement, was the artistic and creative arm of the movement (Parmar and Bain). It consisted of an “informal association of Black nationalist intellectuals and artists during the mid-1960s to mid-1970s,” and has been cited as the direct precedent and inspiration for spoken word poetry (Parmar and Bain).

Black Arts placed particular emphasis on poetry, purportedly because it was short enough to be recited at rallies while still inciting and moving a crowd. When the Black Arts Movement split from internal political schisms, several artists and poets made the transition to the mainstream. These poets include Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin. Ironically, despite the movement itself being plagued with issues of sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism, several Black female poets “rose to lasting fame” (Black Past). These poets inspired a generation of rappers and slam poets that cite the movement explicitly as inspiration.

The Poetry Foundation notes that “spoken word poems frequently refer to issues of social justice, politics, race, and community.” Sadie Alao’s Black Girl Bitter indeed decries the marginalization of Black women in healthcare, particularly in the realm of mental illness. Alao takes care to debunk the stereotypes that lie at the heart of medical bias: that Black women are preternaturally strong, loud, and “crazy,” as she recites in her poem. These assumptions subconsciously perpetuate discriminate treatment at the systemic level: maternal maternity is higher for Black women, health disparities that disproportionately affect Black women receive less research and government funding, and Black women are underrepresented in key biomedical research datasets (Endofound). But those assumptions also create difficulties at the individual level, where it is assumed that Black women are able to shoulder more emotional labor than their white counterpoints, or than Black men. Alao, in Black Girl Bitter, emphasizes the vulnerability and exhaustion of Black women who labor under those stereotypes, inviting both sympathy and fury.

Several parallels could be drawn when comparing Black Girl Bitter to the African-American oral tradition and the history of the spoken word. Previous movements – the Black Arts Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Civil Rights Movement – created art that examined the systemic impacts of racial discrimination. In contrast, it seems the next generation has turned introspective and personal. Art can be dedicated to individual-level analysis and emotional impacts. In addition, there is a parallel to be drawn between Alao advocating specifically for Black women’s mental health and the Black Arts Movement at large. As the Smithsonian puts it, “The experimental and often radical statements of the Black Arts Movement… expanded the boundaries of African American cultural expression, and thereby provided space for increasingly alternative political ideologies to be raised, discussed, and acknowledged.” The Black Arts Movement pushed the envelope enough to allow nuanced, sympathetic, and emotional discussion of Black women’s mental health in the mainstream; in turn, Alao is pushing the envelope with her own critical analysis of Black culture, provoking discussion and making space for other Black female artists to create their own art on the subject.

One final parallel can be drawn from Alao’s artist statement. In that statement, Alao turns to a higher power in her search for absolution from mental health. She writes, “I formed a relationship with God and He healed me.” In doing so, she has linked Black Girl Bitter to the rich African-American oral tradition of spirituality. Just as slaves and leaders in the Civil Rights movement alike drew on spirituality for strength, Alao now infuses her slam poetry with the same “faith, freedom, hope, and salvation.”

Black Girl Bitter is inextricably linked to the history of its chosen form, and is an even stronger piece with knowledge of the history behind it.

For more information on Representation of Black Womanhood and related events, visit https://thestamp.umd.edu/stamp_gallery

Sources

Archives:

• CocoJams: African-American Civil Rights Freedom Songs
• Say It Loud: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Works Cited:

• Brown, Angela Khristin. “Cultural Perspective on African American Culture.” International Journal of Education & Literacy Studies, vol. 1, October 2013. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021
• Neal, Larry. “The Black Arts Movement.” The Drama Review: TDR, vol. 12, no. 4, 1968, pp. 28–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1144377. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021
• Parmar, Priya, and Bryonn, Bain. “9. Spoken Word and Hip Hop: The Power of Urban Art and Culture.” Counterpoints, vol. 306, 2007, pp. 131–156. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42979462. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.
• Turner, Darwin T. “African-American History and the Oral Tradition.” Books at Iowa, vol. 53, 1990, pp. 7–12., doi:10.17077/0006-7474.1186.
• https://www.endofound.org/the-disparities-in-healthcare-for-black-women
• https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/spoken-word
• https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-arts-movement-1965-1975