Category Archives: Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP)

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Uncategorized

Bending the Binary, and Our Perception of History

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What We Do After from August 28 to September 30, 2023, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James

When Brian Van Camerik began the project Homosocial, a collection of old photographs showing intimacy amongst same sex couples from the past in 2017, it could not have come at a better time. With President Donald Trump beginning his reign of terror on queer people across the country, it seemed very difficult to find hope and joy in queerness. For many young queer people, being different can feel isolating, and due to crises such as the AIDS epidemic leading to fewer older queer people, they have less elders to guide them. With Homosocial, Van Camerik shows that queer love and joy has always been around- even in times of great hardship. As described on the project’s website, “these photographs span decades and all depict same-gendered couples of men, women, and everyone in between displaying intimacy towards one another.” Throughout the series, multiple pairs are seen as described; some with arms around one another, others with hands clasped. However, what stood out to me is that none of the photographs feature the couples kissing. This adds to the power of the pieces. Queer love was forbidden in most societies in the past, and public displays of it could lead to detainment, violence, death, and/or ostracism. Many of these couples no doubt had to hide their love for each other, though that does not make these small moments captured any less romantic. It adds a deep layer of nuance, and calls attention to a hard truth: public romance is treated as a privilege.

Homosocial, Processing Gender Aspirations (2022), Silver gelatin print, paper, ink.

Throughout the run of the Stamp Gallery exhibit What We Do After, the piece Processing Gender Aspirations from Homosocial has always stood out to me. Although small in dimension and seemingly simple in composition, the depth within the artwork and the project itself makes a deep impact. On a background reminiscent of rippling water flecked through with gold, a black and white photograph is centered. The photograph shows a child dressed in a uniform-like outfit complete with Mary Jane shoes. The child’s gender is not obvious, nor is it specified by artist Brian Van Camerik. Two paired sets of zig zagged lines attach the photo to three simple words, creating the phrase “bending the binary.” As explained by Van Camerik in an Instagram post for the piece, 

I use microprocessing technology as a visual metaphor to illustrate how the individuals in these photographs have connected—the same way that microchips are connected on a circuit board… As a non-binary artist, I am presenting someone I wish to emulate. And while aspirational, this piece is also transgressive. Microprocessing technology operates in binary code but somehow the child thrives within this system and defies the gender binary to boot.

 Processing Gender Aspirations is one of the few pieces in the Homosocial project that features only one figure, and one who also does not fit traditional ideas of the gender binary. As Van Camerik explains above, the child in this piece reflects a quiet rebellion, existing in a normal life as a person who “bends the binary.”

More than anything though, this entire series represents something that was as important back then as it is now, that queer people are normal. The poses in the photographs are no different from any photograph you may see of a cisgendered or heterosexual couple, pushing against the idea that queer people are dangerous or deviant. Queer people love and live just like anyone else does, something important to represent especially with all the anti-gay and anti-transgender legislation popping up all over the country. Joy is essential to change, something expressed through the Homosocial collection as well as the current CAPP exhibit at the Stamp Gallery. At the very bottom of the Homosocial website, a dedication can be found, reading “For the individuals who were lost, silenced, or hurt because of whom they loved.” Remembering the faces of those who came before in the struggle for LGBTQ rights and their joy in the face of adversity can help us find our way and begin to build a better life for all people. 

Homosocial’s work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28 to September 30, 2023.

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Explore, Uncategorized

The clock strikes Infertile:  Gabriela Vainsencher’s Hourglass

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What We Do After from August 28 to September 30, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Reshma Jasmin

*Note: this post refers to womanhood and motherhood in a cis-normative manner due to the organ-centric focus of aging*

In the past three months, my father has brought up the topic of marriage, babies, and my biological clock three times—I am a 21-year-old college student. He likened my ova as the fruits of a mango tree: after it reaches its fruit bearing age, the best mangoes are those produced in the first three years. Ironically, I have endometriosis, so the question of fertility is up in the air.

Gabriela Vainsencher’s Hourglass emanates this anxiety, by creating the anatomy of a cervix in the shape of an hourglass, with menstrual blood slipping through the cervix like sand. But Vainsencher’s experience differs from mine, which makes sense as she is 20 years older, an established artist, and a mother. She is also a cis-woman who went through pregnancy and labor for her own biological daughter, and she depicts womanhood and motherhood within the realm of her personal experience. So the impending midnight strike of a biological clock means something entirely different for her than it does for me. 

Gabriela Vainsencher, Mom, 2021. Porcelain. 8 x 12 feet

Most of Vainsencher’s recent work focuses on the experiences of motherhood, notably Mom (2021) (pictured above). She describes the piece as “…a self-portrait inspired by living through the covid-19 pandemic, which started when my daughter was one year old. For over a year I cared for her, worked from home, and couldn’t get to my studio” (sourced from artist’s website). The large porcelain piece depicts a snake-like figure of arms and breasts doing various motherly tasks. The breasts are arguably what makes the biggest impact. Their literal function is to provide milk, and whether mothers use formula or breastmilk, the symbolism still stands: motherhood is allowing your nutrients to be sucked out of you, or in more palatable terms, giving up yourself for your child. While all the arms are occupied with various motherly tasks like cooking, shopping, cleaning, carrying a child, etc., there are just as many  breasts as there are arms, even though breasts only serve one main function in motherhood. Although there is also the long haired head at one end of the figure and the title to distinguish that the figure is a woman, a mother, the abundance of breasts hint at what else society demands of mothers: women who maintain their role as pretty sexual objects.

Mother Figure Series Sculptures (2021-ongoing) Porcelain, stoneware, underglaze, etc.

Vainsencher’s Mother Figure Series Sculptures (pictured above) depicts worried mothers, pregnant bellies, female anatomy, and the looming biological clock. The stretched, protruding bellies and the folds of skin on the backs of each torso show the toll of pregnancy on the body. The sagging breast depicts the loss of conventional beauty and youth that comes with age and motherhood. The key-chain earrings on oversized ears suggests that mothers are always in motion, always thinking about their children’s needs and schedules.

Gabriela Vainsencher, Hourglass, 2023. Porcelain, underglaze, glaze, acrylic

Upon seeing Gabriella Vainsencher’s Hourglass (pictured above), my first thought was, “How is this mounted on the wall?” Granted, I was watching the early stages of its installation in the Stamp Gallery, and the piece is made of porcelain and glaze, so it seemed a bit delicate to be held up the way that it is (on two screws drilled through the porcelain). In my surprise at how securely the piece was mounted, I realized that my assumption about the fragility and “weakness” of the porcelain was similar to the societal perception of women as the “weaker sex.” But the curved lines of the stretchy maternity pants on the conflated pregnant bellies from Vainsencher’s Mother Figure Series Sculptures and the bulges with the same curved lines tell a different story: they resemble striated muscles, signifying the strength written into a mother’s body.

The muscle-like bulges also create the hourglass shape, and lead the eye to the center of the piece, the cervix. The transition from the warm, cozy golden brown of the uterus to the dark dried period blood of the vaginal canal resembles the passage of time and a movement from comfort to discomfort. This gradient coupled with the rock-like shapes in the two halves of the hourglass shape depict the pain of aging; each period brings one closer to menopause, and the hourglass figure of a conventionally beautiful woman is also lost with time. Simply put, in our culture, old women are not pretty. The biological clock is a term coined by men to describe how a woman’s fertility is headed towards the precarious cliff of the age of 30 and later at menopause, but it also describes the anxieties of women where their worth and standing in society hangs in the balance of their beauty and fertility. 

The rock-like forms passing through the hourglass resonate with me, as periods and ovulation involve immense pain due to endometriosis. And, despite not being a mother, nor subscribing entirely to the identity of woman, nor intending to experience pregnancy and have a biological child; the fear of losing fertility and youth translating to the loss of beauty and worth is an anxiety I share in my own experience. With Hourglass, Vainsencher depicts the universal fear of aging, unique to those who identify as women and have female sex organs, as being built into our bodies as a ticking biological clock, a constant reminder of our fears and strength and worth. 

Gabriela Vainsencher’s work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28 to September 30, 2023. 

For more information on Gabriela Vainsencher visit https://gabrielavainsencher.com/

For more information on What We Do After, and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery

For more information about the Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP) visit: https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery/contemporary_art_collection

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Explore, Uncategorized

Together: A Blackness of Multitudes

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What We Do After from August 28 to September 30, 2023, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Trinitee Tatum

There is hardly a passerby that is not entranced by Megan Lewis’ Together. The regal size and bold color palette beckons onlookers to step into the striking world of Lewis’ portrait, where she grapples with her varied emotions and experiences as a Black woman. Viewers are encouraged to discover the multiplicity of Blackness alongside Lewis.

Megan Lewis, Together (2021), Oil and acrylic on canvas.

The painting’s title, Together, speaks to community empowerment through inclusion. The art industry has been historically exclusive in its subject matter and artists. Many artists of color struggle with the industry’s tokenization and exploitation of their image. Through Together, Lewis calls for equal opportunity to create art without subjugation to these hardships. She reclaims her own narrative and image that has historically been defined for her, for Black people. 

Blackness alone is enough to be extraordinary, to be striking. But Lewis does not stop at this in her work. She situates Blackness within the historically white context of portraiture, where subjects are presented in a predictable manner, with robes of satin and velvet. They are noblemen and women, lords and ladies, those whose wealth and power is reflected in their clothing. In Together, Lewis’ subject contrasts this convention in a striking yellow shirt with dynamic red circles and true blue bottoms. The subject, positioned in a typical manner– straight back, outward glaze, delicately folded hand–is anything but ordinary, with the hands painted in bubblegum pink with teal green nails. Lewis’ choice to depict hands in this manner highlights the sitter’s face as the sole literal representation of Blackness. The subject’s face, and more specifically her eyes, draws viewers into her inner being beyond her skin color. If eyes are the window to the soul, then Lewis’ technicolored portrait is the window into hers.

Together demonstrates to the audience that Blackness is not black. It’s pink and orange with a dash of blue and a swipe of red. Her strokes challenge notions that Blackness is monolithic, homogeneous. She draws Blackness out of the shadows of art history and into the light. Her strategic use of colors, including the contrasting orange background with blue leaves that frame the subject, is perhaps an assertion of her knowledge of art and color theory. Orange and blue are complementary colors on the color wheel and enhance each other’s intensity when juxtaposed. Lewis’ use of both acrylic and oil paint speaks to her mastery of both mediums. Artists of color are consistently invalidated and questioned on their knowledge and application of art history, theory, and practice. Through Together, Lewis shuts down any lingering questions about her abilities as an impactful and informative artist. 

Megan Lewis’ work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28 to September 30, 2023. 

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Uncategorized

Unpacking Climate Anxieties With A Dinosaur

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What We Do After from August 28th to September 30th, 2023, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Ellen Zhang

Among the various pieces on display in the Gallery’s latest exhibition What We Do After, I find myself especially captivated by Rachel Garber Cole’s Questions for a Dinosaur. This body of work consists of a 9-minute video in which Cole role-plays various personas while asking an unresponsive dinosaur a series of questions. Accompanying this video are 52 digital and silkscreen prints of the artist posed as the dinosaur.

Rachel Garber Cole, Questions for a Dinosaur (2017/2020), 9-minute video.

The reason why What We Do After resonates so deeply with me is the way in which Cole poses her questions in the video. They are short, blunt, and disconnected in a way that frames the questions as a series of inquisitive tangents. It is slightly chaotic and, because of this, extremely relatable. As I grow older, the list of questions in the back of my mind piles on in a similar manner: How do I file taxes? What career path is the best fit for me? Is it time to be fiscally responsible and stop spending money on coffee? How can I advocate for the political issues that I am passionate about? Like Cole’s questions, these internal thoughts have no rhyme or reason. Instead, they stay nestled within my mind and exist in a somewhat arbitrary arrangement, lacking structure and order. 

While there is little flow between each of Cole’s questions, there is a common theme that all of her questions touch on directly or indirectly: mass extinction triggered by climate change. Some of her questions that are presented on the digital prints, such as, “Are we currently living through a mass extinction?”, allude to the increasing occurrences of life-threatening climate disasters. In other words, are these wildfires, droughts, floods, and deterioration of air quality a collective indication of us living through a mass extinction? Other questions like “How powerless am I?” probe the level of control and responsibility an individual has in mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Rachel Garber Cole, Questions for a Dinosaur (2017/2020), 52 digital and silkscreen print portfolio.
Rachel Garber Cole, Questions for a Dinosaur (2017/2020), 52 digital and silkscreen print portfolio.

Cole’s use of unorganized questions accurately reflects unspoken fears about climate change. By vocalizing these overwhelming questions in a way similar to how we internally think about them, she encourages the audience to discuss fears that feel too terrifying to bring up openly. 

In the video, Cole is also seen playing different personas as she asks questions to a nonreactive dinosaur. It’s clear why the artist has selected a dinosaur, of all things, to ask; as an extinct species, they are experts in the matter. Additionally, incorporating a silent dinosaur makes the topic of mass extinction a little less frightening. There is a clear dichotomy between the profound nature of Cole’s questions and the funny-looking dinosaur, thus making the topic of extinction and climate change more approachable. Likewise, on the surface, Cole’s different personas – girl scout, housewife, meteorologist, and more – are certainly humorous and captivating. However, the multiplicity of identities represented also reveals how climate change and extinction are shared worries. She breaks down barriers of entry to conversations surrounding climate-induced mass extinction by reassuring individuals that they are not alone in their anxieties. 

Cole’s Questions for a Dinosaur is certainly a new take on expressing the impending doom of climate change through artwork. Rather than using jarring and fear-mongering pictures, she opts to captivate the audience’s attention through humor, without undermining the urgent and dire nature of climate change. The ability to balance the two is what I find so fascinating about Questions for a Dinosaur. Through serious but playfully staged questions, Cole transforms the Gallery into a welcoming space for raw and unfiltered dialogue on climate change. 

Rachel Garber Cole’s work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28 to September 30, 2023. 

Artist Interviews, Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Explore

Mentorship Behind the Making of The Royal Blue Series (and more from the series)

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What We Do After from August 28 to October 6, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat

“Life is about give and give, not give and take.”

Beverly Price
(Beverly Price, conversation between the artist and the author on 9/12/2023).

There’s something about Beverly Price’s Royal Blue Series that takes the photographs beyond the wall. Judging from the insights Price shared this past February, during the CAPP cohort’s visit to the community focused artist residency program, the Nicholson Project, as well as recent discussions we’ve had, it is clear that the Royal Blue Series is significant for its impact on the subjects and the awareness it draws to DC neighborhoods. 

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Beverly Price has centered her art practice  and her education so far within the D.M.V. area. The artist studied business, organizational leadership and liberal arts at Georgetown University, and later, she completed a Master of Fine Arts in photographic and electronic media at Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited and featured works at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (museum shop), Anacostia Art Center, Maryland Institute College of Art, American University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and more (courtesy of the artist’s website). 

Price’s career as both an artist and an activist hold firm roots within youth and community advocacy and involvement. Over the last five years, she has served in a variety of agencies and institutions throughout Baltimore City and her home, Washington D.C., as an empathetic educator and resident artist. You could trace her footprints to the American University, the Latin American Youth Center, Forest Park High School (Baltimore), and Charles Hart Middle School (Washington, D.C.) to name a few. Furthermore, Price instructed a Teen Residency Workshop Series at The Nicholson Project, where she was also an artist in residence until March of 2023 (courtesy of the artist’s website).

Price’s fervent investment in D.C. communities, observable in her Royal Blue Series, stems from her own experiences with loss of innocence and its impact on her life. In 2002, Price was sentenced to five years in prison as a senior in high school. When she returned home from prison at age 23, she decided to dedicate her life and her art practice to her continued growth and to the benefit of her community (courtesy of the artist’s website). Describing her experience teaching and working with youth in D.C. neighborhoods, she said, “life is about give and give… not give and take.” She expressed how giving is a key takeaway she wants to leave with younger generations, especially in underserved communities.

The Royal Blue Series dives into the heart of a D.C. neighborhood to demonstrate not only how children are directly affected by cycles of violence, but also how art can channel those experiences into healing with the opportunity for restoration and compensation. Price set out to explore adolescence and Black boys’ experiences growing up in D.C. at the onset of the project, and found motivation in uncovering ways to protect the innocence of Black boys in America. To create this series, Price collaborated with a group of adolescent boys in 2019, facing the aftermath of a murder of their brother and friend, 11-year-old Karon Brown. In the wake of this trauma, Price photographed the boys playing and hanging out – gathering in shared spaces like the playground. While building a relationship with them and taking their photos, Price also compensated the boys for their participation.

In Long Live Baby K, 2019, the child on the left is seen wearing a shirt in remembrance of Karon Brown. 2022 Silver Gelatin Print (Pearl), 11x14in. (courtesy of the artist’s website)

Price emphasized that she wants to show the boys that they can and will be compensated for their work in the art world. She hopes to impart on them that creative work, especially photography, can be an alternative source of income in addition to being a creative outlet as they work through their emotions. 

Accordingly, on one of her 2022 visits with the (now) teenage boys, she spent a day teaching them how to take photos and letting them use her camera to photograph each other. Over the course of the Royal Blue Series’ movement through exhibitions, art collections, publications, Price has endeavored to share this journey with the boys however she can, and to be a resource to her young collaborators in their creative development. The series photograph, Ray, 2022, depicts one of the children handling Price’s camera and peering into the lens. 

In Ray, 2022, The adolescent boy (left) is seen handling Price’s camera and peering into the lens. 2022 Silver gelatin print (pearl), 11x14in. (courtesy of the artist’s website)

Price is finding ways to keep the next generation’s attention by sharing creative practices that can engage emotions while generating an income stream. Now, when I view Price’s photography, I am hearing her voice play in my head, “give and give…not give and take.”

–

Beverly Price’s work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28  to October 6, 2022.

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RESOURCE(S):

  1. Price, Beverly, “Meet Beverly,” 2023. Artist Website, 2023. https://www.beverlypricephoto.com/royal-blue-the-essence-of-innocence 
  2. Price Beverly, “The Royal Blue Series (The Essence of Innocence), 2022. Artist Website, 2023. https://www.beverlypricephoto.com/royal-blue-the-essence-of-innocence 
  3. Price/Chilcoat Discussion, September 12, 2023.
  4. Artist Talk with Beverly Price for CAPP, at the Nicholson Project, February 2023.
Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Uncategorized

Natural Fragility from Argentina to Greenland and Beyond; Ingrid Weyland’s Topographies of Fragility V as a warning about the impacts of overusing Earth’s resources

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Topographies of Fragility V from August 28th to September 30th, 2023, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho

Mounted on a wall in the latter half of the Gallery facing visitors as they enter the exhibit is Ingrid Weyland’s Topographies of Fragility V archival pigment print. Born from a return trip across the world where she witnessed how unchecked human abuse of the natural world, Fragility V stands as an outcry against humanity’s role in climate destruction. 

Ingrid Weyland, Topographies of Fragility V, 2019. Archival pigment print, edition 6/7.

Akin to many before and after photos, Weyland masterfully bridges the past and present in Fragility V. By layering a scrunched-up copy of the print on top of a flat version, Weyland symbolises the destruction of nature in how the untouched beauty of an Argentinian forest she visited in the past has deteriorated since then. In the same way that Weyland scrunched up the identical print beyond repair, visitors can observe how the damage done to this forest is practically impossible to restore, and ponder what it might have looked like during her initial visit. 

Importantly, Weyland’s message extends beyond Argentina to the rest of the world, where humans both directly and indirectly impact the natural world. Places such as the Amazon rainforest, originally an area of nearly seven million square kilometres, has lost about twenty percent of its forests. Comparatively, that would be like if the US lost a natural environment the size of California and Kentucky put together.  In the image comparison below of satellite captures of the rainforest in 1985 and 2016, the red indicates vegetation and is visibly reduced in the second image. As in the case with the forest in Topographies of Fragility V, the rainforests of the Amazon will likely never grow back, or if they do, it will be with difficulty. Deforestation of the trees disrupts the symbiotic relationship that the trees have with organisms in the soil. Namely, these organisms in the soil or on the roots of the trees provide hard-to-gather nutrients to the trees like nitrogen from the decomposing biomass (since the soil itself is close to infertile) in exchange for a portion of the energy that the trees get from photosynthesis. The loss of the trees leads to the death of this niche set of organisms, meaning that regrowing a rainforest may be near-impossible due to the loss of this previously natural symbiosis. The comparisons may not seem mind-blowing in the before/after images below, but remember that these photographs were taken by satellites that are far above the earth!

Photographs by the ESA (European Space Agency) of the northwestern section of the Amazon Rainforest.

Similarly, Greenland’s ice sheets have been losing 270 billion metric tons of ice every year. Below is a visualisation of that loss of ice by NASA since 2002 alone, which shows how over the course of the life of many college students at UMD today, water levels from this ice loss have increased dramatically. 

By providing us with a visual representation of the dire situation we find ourselves in across the globe, Weyland’s Topography of Fragility V represents what we cannot allow to continue. Because it is not What We Do After we reach the tipping point of deforestation, ice sheet melting, or climate change as a whole, but What We Do Before that matters. Before we lose not only the trees, but also the animals and other wildlife that depend on the environment formed by the trees. Before the rising water levels produced by the melted ice sheets engulf or partly engulf cities like Annapolis, London, Shanghai, Mumbai, Tokyo, and the like underwater by 2050—which doesn’t account for countries that are already facing high floods or are partly underwater already, nor for other natural wonders like the Great Barrier Reef that faces total destruction within our lifetimes. 

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Explore, Top Picks!

Contemplating “Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other”

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New Arrivals 2021 from August 30 to October 16, 2021 at the STAMP Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | written by Isabella Chilcoat

Faith Couch, a young and electrifying contemporary photographer, breaks through walls of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality through her pure, intimate, and unapologetic images. Graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2019, Couch has already exhibited across the globe in the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University,  Queen’s University Belfast, Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie, and International Center of Photography to name a few, and has earned a spot on the Forbes 30 under 30 for Art and Style. She currently works out of Baltimore, MD and continues to gain notoriety throughout the world for her sensitive and provocative photographs.

Remarkably, two of her works, selected by University of Maryland’s CAPP committee for the University’s permanent collection, currently hang in the STAMP Gallery inspiring feelings of reverence, awe, and intrigue. Fitting seamlessly into this year’s CAPP committee’s mission, the members note that both selected works inspire internal and interpersonal discussion into the complexities and dynamisms of the Black experience.

“The intangible aspect of Memory is concretized in a visceral sense via the body but is triggered by an object, image, sound, or gesture”

Couch, Faith. “Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other.” Faith Couch, 2020, https://www.faithcouch.com/black-love-is-political#1. Accessed 17 September 2021.

One of her pieces adorning the walls in the STAMP Gallery exhibit is Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other, 2021, Archival Inkjet Print, 24” x 36” that has sparked incredible conversation within the gallery in only its first month on display. The luminous photo print describes a scene of Faith, herself, and her partner nude in a vast grass field as they rest intertwined with loving gazes over each other’s bodies as if to absorb every moment in the presence of the person they love. The composition betrays the immaculate skill of the artist and tantalizes the eye of the viewer with its soft diagonals of limbs and torsos, while employing a fascinating one point perspective from the impressions of cut grass opening toward the couple who reclines in the central foreground and basks in golden sunlight.

Delving more deeply into Couch’s exquisite technique, the image contains shadows on the bottom corners taking the form of a subtle vignette, and, as the viewer draws nearer the picture, they become a part of the vignette that distances them from the scene. Here, the artist establishes privacy and safe distance for her figures so that they remain undisturbed, but, equally, to enforce that the viewers may only experience this moment vicariously by removing room to objectify her subject’s bodies. The serenity and intimacy is preserved forever.

Couch has commented “The intangible aspect of Memory is concretized in a visceral sense via the body but is triggered by an object, image, sound, or gesture.” Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other captures the history and folklore, indispensable to Black culture and invokes the internal landscape of both dark and joyous memories through the image of Black people expressing tenderness, love, and intimacy. She composed a highly personal image that speaks especially to members of the diaspora to establish connectivity and community in shared happiness and pain. Ultimately, via Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other, Faith Couch asserts that the greatest statement against injustice and disharmony is love.

P.S. I HIGHLY encourage you to check out all of Faith Couch’s works on display in person for the full viewing experience (socially distant of course) as well as her instagram for exclusive content and even more shots of her work and artistic process

Faith Couch’s work is included in New Arrivals 2021 at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 30 – October 16, 2021. Couch will be joining the other artists of New Arrivals 2021 in an artist talk in the Gallery in October 2021.

For more information on Faith Couch, visit https://www.faithcouch.com/#1 

For more information and to view Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other virtually, visit https://www.faithcouch.com/black-love-is-political#4 

For more information on New Arrivals 2021 and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery .

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition

Memory, History, and Feminine-Coded Media in the work of Diane Meyer

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New Arrivals 2019 from September 11th to October 20th, 2019 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Maddi Rihn

From afar, Diane Meyer’s work appears to be unordinary. On a white wall protruding perpendicularly from the windowed side of the Stamp Gallery hang three of Meyer’s pieces, each of them small enough that they could comfortably fit in, say, a scrapbook. The bottom-right picture, New Jersey VII, captures a lakeside scene, an unidentifiable figure perched atop a rock, peering into the reflective water. Above it lies a picture of an early spring countryside, New Jersey IX, complete with grazing cows and a broken-down fence, not unlike memories I have of looking out the window while driving around my rural hometown. And at the top, The West I, a rust-colored desert scattered with prominent Utahan rock formations in the background. These pictures themselves are perhaps mundane, appearing journalistic rather than artistic, but upon closer inspection, reveal the true diligence and detail put into the creation of these works. Meyer’s photographs are spotted with miniature hand-embroidered square pixels, matched perfectly with the colors of the background, that alter and obscure part of the image. It’s these pixels that give the work such complex meaning; they epitomize perfectly the emotion and politics associated with keeping and maintaining memory. 

meyer all.JPG

When I approach these pieces, I think of my mother’s role as the documenter, if you will, of my family. Nowadays she scrapbooks less diligently (if at all – technology perhaps lessens the pressure of forgetting) but my memories of my mother adamantly cutting and pasting pictures into a book, a now 15-year-old artifact of my childhood, still ring clearly in my head. There is something so intimate and meticulous about memory-keeping, in the form of scrapbooking and photo-album-keeping, yet we so often overlook its importance in the grand scheme of history and art. This role of the woman as a documenter is part of what Meyer is getting at with her three pieces in New Arrivals 2019.

In her series, Time Spent That Might Otherwise Be Forgotten, when Meyer combines embroidery, a traditionally feminine-coded task, with photography, and especially in this case, photographs that hold memories, places, and people, she comments on the role of the woman as family memory-keeper and how this vitally important craft is often overlooked. Additionally, the usage of embroidery brings up the critical rhetoric around traditionally feminine craft, such as fiber art, being overlooked in the realm of “high art”. Family memory-keeping is often deemed essential, but the person doing it is often vastly removed from the work. In any other context, she would be deemed a historian – but because this is considered domestic work, similarly to the way sewing, knitting, and embroidery has been reduced to craft, she is not. 

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By contrast, in the age of technology, the task of memory-keeping has become largely obsolete. The age of keeping physical pictures, photo albums, and scrapbooking is long over for most people; it is no longer seen as valuable, but futile. This forces us to confront the effect technology has on memory and on history. Does technology indeed glitch, like the pixels in Meyer’s pieces, our memory of things? Does it perhaps interfere with our experience? Does technology aid us or work to our detriment when we use it to remember? How may technology skew our perceptions of others? 

Meyers’ photos bring us closer to our reality, no matter how much we try to detach ourselves from it. In the age of widespread, easily accessible documentation, how do we navigate something as inherently subjective as memory?

Diane Meyer’s work is included in New Arrivals 2019 at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from September 11th to October 20th, 2019. 

For more information on Diane Meyer, visit dianemeyer.net

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition

Climate Change and Art

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New Arrivals 2019 from September 11th to October 20th, 2019 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Gabrielle O’Brien

Art has always been a reflection of the times we live in. The current Anthropogenic period is no exception. Driven primarily by human influence, the Anthropocene is a period that has seen significant environmental destruction and increasing climate change. As a result, the volume of artwork addressing the negative influence of humans on nature has grown in recent years. This is seen in the emergence of climate change art, a field of art inspired by climate change and global warming. The purpose of this field is to provide amore accessible and personalized method of engaging with data related to climate change than is traditionally allowed through research articles or scientific presentations. This movement, and others like it, are critical to engaging the public in thoughtful, meaningful discourse about the environmental crisis we currently face. It
also acts as a bridge to connect the scientific world with a broader audience.

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New Arrivals 2019 contains multiple pieces that explore the relationship between mankind and nature in the context of climate change. Steel Face Concrete Bend by Letha Wilson features a natural scene overlain with strips of steel and layers of concrete. The steel and concrete appear to slash through the vegetation, evoking a sense of destruction and industrialization. This suggests the dominant manner in which mankind has manipulated nature for our own purposes. Pulling Back the Lace by Rachel Schmidt displays projected footage shot on the Isle of Skye on an image of lace being pulled back. The video presents “glitches” where evidence of humanity is seen in the natural scenery. The piece highlights the far-reaching, negative impact of civilization and emphasizes that no place, even a remote island, is immune to the influence of mankind.

schmidt opening

The exhibition features two pieces by Noel Kassewitz, I Wish to Communicate With You and Rococo Remastered: Sunset on the Empire, that both address rising sea levels, a consequence of global warming. I Wish to Communicate With You combines found flotation devices with woven paintings with an accompanying print of the piece floating off the coast of New York City. This not only rouses a sense of urgency, conveying to the viewer the nearness of global warming to our everyday life, but also uses humor to connect to the viewer, as the purpose of the flotation devices is to ensure the piece will survive in the face of rising sea levels. Rococo Remastered: Sunset on the Empire is a sculptural painting made of marine foam and sailcloth that Kassewitz used to float down the Potomac River. The piece also utilizes humor to comment on the environmental crisis, as it is floatation-ready and would also survive throughout rising sea levels.

It is clear that climate change is not going to disappear. In fact, if trends continue, it will
accelerate and its consequences will worsen in severity within our lifetime. However, art serves as a beacon of hope in that it is an avenue to encourage honest, productive conversations about the crisis we currently face.

Letha Wilson’s, Rachel Schmidt’s, and Noel Kassewitz’s work is included in New Arrivals 2019 at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from September 11th to October 20th, 2019.

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition

Nature in a Manmade World

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New Arrivals 2019 from September 11th to October 20th, 2019 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Balbina Yang

The beauty of an artwork not only lies in its message, but also in its medium. In fact, the medium may be the thing that gives an artwork its meaning. Such an effect is true in multiple works in New Arrivals 2019. From 3,180 KM by Lester Rodriguez to Steel Face and Concrete Bend by Letha Wilson, the natural materialities of the artworks evoke messages that can be appreciated and, consequently, internalized by anyone who witnesses them. 

In 3,180 KM, Rodriguez utilizes wood in two styles: larger pieces that form the base atop which toothpicks are inserted. The artwork itself illuminates the themes of immigration. The number, 3,180 KM is the distance of the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Obviously, these themes are rather grim as they are relevant in today’s society. However, Rodriguez decides to use toothpicks, a structure which are structurally thin as well as traditionally flimsy. By utilizing a weaker style of wood, Rodriguez emphasizes the precarious situation that the border presents to both immigrants and non-immigrants. Yet, these toothpicks are supported by the larger blocks of wood beneath. Not only that, there are not just one or two toothpicks, there are so many that the work itself seems to be made of a solid plane of toothpicks. 

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By contrasting the styles of wood and their respective durabilities, Rodriguez presents an aesthetic that supports the fact that although the border may be a precarious situation, it is very much present and will always be. 

Rodriguez isn’t the only artist to use natural materials to convey the message in their artwork. In Steel Face and Concrete Bend, Wilson forces viewers to contemplate the relationship of the two sides of nature: natural and manmade. The work features a photograph of leaves juxtaposed to swatches of concrete and strips of steel. Concrete is made up of natural sand and gravel mixed with water and chemical additives. Steel, too, may seem natural but is actually synthetic. The photograph may seem natural because it shows leaves, entities that exist in the natural world. However, the photograph is manmade not just through its practice, which people have cultivated throughout history, but also through its materiality. By flipping back and forth from natural and manmade materials, Wilson ponders the connection between two worlds that we, as viewers, seldom step back to think about. In a sense, Wilson inverts the meaning of natural objects by giving them an artificial one, and vice versa. 

Both 3,180 KM and Steel Fwilson.jpgace and Concrete Bend are powerful pieces that force us as viewers to take a look at the world through its material values. While the artworks may seem simplistic in terms of the number of materials used, the way that they are styled to create a cohesive argument is what makes the pieces stand out. In fact, if 3,180 KM wasn’t made of wood, much less toothpicks, and if Steel Face and Concrete Bend wasn’t made up of photographs, steel, and concrete, the meanings of each may not be as powerful as they are now. 

Lester Rodriguez’s and Letha Wilson’s works are included in New Arrivals 2019 at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from September 11th to October 20th, 2019.