All posts by okfoley

Current Exhibition

Spiritual Beings of Found Material

Open Ended Narratives: Mixed Media Assemblages on Wood by Schroeder Cherry from February 18 to April 5, 2025 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Oliver Foley

Angel Can #95, Black Wings by Schroeder Cherry. Mixed media on wood, 13×14 inches. 2023.

There is an inherent spirituality to the found object assemblage, whether intentional or not. The diverse lived experiences of found materials form a collage of human routine which takes on a persona of its own. Although every piece in Schroeder Cherry’s Open Ended Narratives is rich in material identity, the Angel Can series (2020-2023) isuniquely potent in itswielding of well-travelled components. These pieces “depict Black males as spiritual beings,” writes Cherry, “guides one calls on when in the thick of it.” Buttons, once tied to the habit and movement of a wearer, punctuate the erratically carved wings of the Angels as relics of individual human lives. Bent wires emerge from the halo upon each Angel like coils of hair atop the portrait-like face which humanizes the otherwise ethereal beings. Cherry writes that the Angels “are effective because they have seen some things,” a statement which applies both to the figures embodied in the pieces and the artifacts which constitute them. 

Angel Can #90, Purple Wings by Schroeder Cherry. Mixed media on wood, 8×10.5 inches. 2020.

The relationship between the object identities of the Angels and their spiritual power is best understood through the lens of mystical devices. Upon first encountering these pieces I was reminded of the Central African Nkisi, objects inhabited by spirits. Both visually and thematically, there are many commonalities between Cherry’s Angel Cans and the power figure, which is a subclass of Nkisi taking a human likeness. The can which comprises the heart of the pieces evokes the special cavities in the bodies of power figures which held magical substances. Instead of sacred medicines and herbs are cans of old bay or tea, substances of significance in the everyday. The wires puncturing the Angels call to mind the Kongo power figure called the Nkondi, into which nails are driven to activate the spirit within. Another symbol which recalls the Nkondi are the mirrors ornamenting each Angel; the Kongo tradition adorns them on the figure as tools of vision into the spirit world. If this is indeed their representative function on Cherry’s piece, they would be working in tandem with the key on each Angel which Cherry describes as “represent[ing] tools of access.” 

According to Cherry, this series was inspired by the Garcia Marquez short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” which tells the tale of an elderly angel that fell to earth. In the story, the angel is held captive and deeply misunderstood: he does not fit the expectations of the church, nor can he perform the miracles that the townspeople want. Turned into an attraction in a traveling circus, the angel is held in a chicken coop. This tale parallels not only that of African power figures stolen and imprisoned in museums by white “explorers,” but the way in which all elements of African culture were captured, misunderstood, then discarded by the colonizer. Disparate discarded materials come together to form the Angel Can with a broad basis of lived experience, fragmentary yet rich with meaning. Thematically, the syncretism between consumerism, western religious iconography and African tradition reflects their interlinked nature in African American culture. At the center of each Angel Can is the element which unites all of the distinct cultural and material parts: the face. If the mirrors are the windows into the spirit world, then the eyes of each Angel is its window into the human world. The face is perhaps the most intuitively understood manifestation of identity, and the Black male face defining each Angel unifies the individual identities of its components into an artistic whole.

Angel Can #113, Blue Wings by Schroeder Cherry. Mixed media on wood, 10×9.5 inches. 2023.

Quotes cite the artist statement and descriptive texts written by Schroeder Cherry for this exhibition.

Additional information gathered from MacGaffey, Wyatt (1993). Astonishment & Power, The Eyes of Understanding: Kongo Minkisi. National Museum of African Art.

Current Exhibition

Window to Earth

We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity from October 16 to December 7, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Oliver Foley

We Live in the Sky is an exhibition dominated by the tones of paper and black ink, with the vast majority of the works on paper using an achromatic palette. Amongst these works, Tori Ellison’s Windows in the Sky (2024) stands out as one of the exhibition’s only multicolor screenprints. Screen prints only have two discrete values of color: there are areas where the screen allows ink through and areas where the photoresist is hardened and the ink cannot pass through. In order to create the illusion of grays and color gradients, this piece employs a technique called halftone. Halftone prints transform an image into a grid of colored dots, and these dots are scaled in size based on how much of a color should be perceived. In Windows in the Sky, the paper is black, so the space left between the halftone dots of the color results in a darkening of the perceived color. The areas of intersection where the different colored screens meet appears lighter and more saturated, since more of the black background is obscured by the ink.

Tori Ellison, Windows in the Sky (2024)

This dark, yet colorful piece is hung opposite from Tori Ellison’s Sky Writing (2024). The airy, freely floating Sky Writing hangs in stark contrast to the earthy tones of Windows in the Sky. The parchment is semi-translucent like a cloud covering the sun, sparsely adorned with the shadow-like tendrils of calligraphy. One of the central sheets of Sky Writing even uses the same screen as Windows in the Sky, but in a neutral black rather than a hued ink. The bird of the earth and bird of the sky face each other in the gallery space.  The two pieces mirror each other in many ways, including literally: Windows in the Sky is enclosed in a highly reflective glass frame, which almost always reflects the lights of the space and Sky Writing. At times the dark print is overpowered by the reflections, like the reflections of sky on a lake. Standing in this space between Sky Writing and Windows in the Sky conjures up the feeling of floating amidst dense clouds and looking down onto earth through a small window. 

Tori Ellison, Sky Writing (2024)

Tori Ellison’s work is included in We Live in the Sky at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16th to December 7th, 2024. For more information on Ellison, visit https://www.toriellison.com/. For more information on We Live in the Sky and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_we_live_sky_home_displacement_identity or visit our instagram @stampgalleryumd.

Current Exhibition

Anacostia Intelligence

The Digital Landscape from August 26 to October 5, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Oliver Foley

Art can be divided into two elementary actions: observation and synthesis. In the creation of a piece of art, the human takes in their surroundings, their own thoughts, their friends; then their neurons disassemble, reassemble, combine, and distort the data which was once an observation. That which is exterior to the artist is digested into a viscous chum within the mind, a fuel which can then be channeled through the hands, mouth, or body of the artist into their work. This synthesized work is then re-observed and re-synthesized in the cyclic action of art. 

In his pieces Machines Learn From the River: Submerged Printer 1.1 and 1.2 (2024), the artist Billy Friebele invites non-human agents into his craft. Machines collaborate with Friebele in both steps of the art creation process: a video camera extends his ability to observe, and generative artificial intelligence extends his ability to synthesize. 

The use of tools to extend the senses is a phenomenon nearly as old as humanity itself. We possess the innate ability to expand our bodies through the machine, bringing the inanimate into the animate. Friebele’s Machines Learn From the River take their inspiration from two primary sources: Friebele’s own experiences moving through the Anacostia River, and his video piece River / Printer / Habitat. From the perspective of a fish in murky water, Friebele’s camera moves through the shallow waters of the Anacostia, moving quizzically around a large mass of green printed circuit boards and plastic. The camera circumnavigates the pollutant, a large printer with rusting circuit contacts and exposed innards. Through the camera, Friebele is able to see the printer’s vastness to the fish. The eye is limited by the size and movement of the body, but the camera is not; Friebele is able to exit his human perspective and reflect on the proportionality and appearance of the abandoned underwater machine. 

The video was then re-observed by Friebele and his second non-human accomplice: a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). Just as Friebele’s neurons melt his senses into a collection of electrical impulses and neural connections, the artificial neurons of the GAN turn images of the underwater into abstract tokens. This digestive step of synthesis occurs entirely outside of our awareness. In fact, our awareness itself is a product of this digestion. The next step is more conspicuous: the human or machine searches for patterns in the data. These patterns can be internal within the data or relate to past observations. 

A GAN actually consists of two neural networks, and can be thought of as two people discussing their observations and trying to find patterns in them. Each machine-mind extends its abilities through the other, just as Friebele extends his own. These neural networks then realize their findings in the form of an image which mimics the patterns they have found. This image lies in the center of each piece of Machines Learn From the River. The image is bisected in two by a fluid-looking substance, the GAN’s understanding of water; green amorphous blobs protrude from the reflective sludge giving the impression of a plant. A far cry from the uncanny AI images which now populate the internet, this GAN’s output is much more impressionistic and chaotic. This lack of realism emphasizes the imperfect subjectivity of the observation-synthesis process.

 

Machines Learn From the River: Submerged Printer 1.1 (2024) by Billy Friebele

Machines Learn From the River: Submerged Printer 1.1 (2024) by Billy Friebele

 

In the final step in the cyclic process of Machines Learn From the River, Friebele learns from the machines. He takes in the aquatic patterns analyzed and regurgitated by the GAN and applies the same observation-mimicry that the GAN performed on his video. Using paint and natural materials from the Anacostia, Friebele paints the image. Particles of soil intermix with the colors, with a reflectivity imparted by the resin coating. The interpretations of the machines give way to a painting lying in the space between reality and technology. Layered stones and other natural materials pull the patterns back to reality, contextualizing the curves and colors with their real-world counterparts. Each stage of Friebele’s artistic process is apparent, allowing the viewer a glimpse into the internal machinations of both Friebele and his non-human companions. 

Billy Friebele’s work is included in The Digital Landscape at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 26 to October 5, 2024. For more information on Billy Friebele, visit https://www.billyfriebele.com/. For more information on The Digital Landscape and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_digital_landscape.