Category Archives: Current Exhibition

Current Exhibition

We Will Not Be Silent: Art Transforming Rape Culture Exhibition

Look below for all links to visual descriptions, in alphabetical order by artist.

Gloria Garrett

Artist Bio:

Quilt Block: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/gloria-garrett-quilt-block/

Makeup Works: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/peace-and-joy-gloria-garrett/

Needle Points: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/have-faith-needlepoint-gloria-garrett/

Workbooks: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/advice-for-life-workbook-gloria-garrett/

Interview Video: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/video-monument-quilt-history-series-gloria-garrett/

Nickole Keith

Artist Bio:

Quilt Square Photograph: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/quilt-block-nickole-keith-wont-be-displayed-but-photo-of-it/

Portrait Photograph: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/photograph-nickole-keith/

Nnoshe: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/nnoshe-portrait-nickole-keith/

374 Broken Promises: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/374-broken-promises-nickole-keith/

Weaving Through Trauma: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/weaving-through-trauma-nickole-keith/

Brenda Joy Day (Video): https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/brenda-joy-day-video/

Basket, Blood, Memory: Past, Present, and Future: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/basket-iii-nickole-keith/

Eva Salazar

Artist Bio:

Quilt Square: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/quilt-block-eva-salazar/

To Have and To Hold: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/to-have-and-to-hold-eva-salazar/

No Teniá Ganas de Nada, Solo de Vivir: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/no-tenia-ganas-de-nada-solo-de-vivir-eva-salazar/

Uno ha creído a veces, en medio de este camino sin orillas, que nada habría después; que no se podría encontrar nada al otro lado, al final de esta llanura rajada de grietas y de arroyos secos. Pero si, hay algo: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/uno-ha-creido-a-veces-en-medio-de-este-camino-sin-orillas-que-nada-habria-despues-que-no-se-podria-encontrar-nada-al-otro-lado-al-final-de-esta-llanura-rajada-de-grietas-y-de-arroyos-secos-pero-s/

Jadelynn St. Dre

Artist Bio:

Quilt Block: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/quilt-block-jadelynn-st-dre/

Choreographies of Disclosure: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/choreographies-of-disclosure-jadelynn-st-dre/

Protection: https://blog.umd.edu/stampgallery/2025/10/23/bones-piece-jadelynn-st-dre/

Current Exhibition, Uncategorized

Eva Salazar, Monument Quilt Block

Monument Quilt Block is a 8’x8’ fabric and sharpie marker piece created in 2017 by Eva Salazar, FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, and Anonymous Artists. The quilt square is divided into four quadrants and has a variety of fabric squares in different colors and patterns with a solid red background. Salazar’s is in the upper left quadrant. Salazar’s block is solid red and is flanked by two thick, white columns. The center is composed of block letters in uppercase which are cut out of pale green, smooth fabric that spell out a message in Spanish (From top left to bottom right): “No hay culpa en tu silencio asegura. Tu sobre-vivencia.” There are several small, handwritten messages in dark blue sharpie markers in some of the letters that spell out an additional message. (From top left to bottom right): “Yo temo que mi Papá me culparia por lo que pasó.” The upper right panel is solid red, with uppercase black letters written in sharpie in the center saying “My body is beyond what you made it.” Right underneath the end of the sentence, there is a rectangle of white fabric with additional black sharpie writing inside partially in all caps and then lowercase within two parentheses, which reads: “I am healing (no thanks to you).” The bottom left quadrant has a solid red background with a folded over, peach-colored, wrinkled-looking piece of cloth that creates the shape of a sideways V. The bottom right quadrant is a solid red with three plant stems in the center with light green and lavender leaves on them, all made out of cut up pieces of fabric. The leaves have the details of their veins drawn on in green marker. There is one leaf off of the stems in the upper right corner of the block.

Current Exhibition

Orientation: Jeffery Hampshire’s Urban Landscapes

Have you ever had a moment when a memory suddenly resurfaces, vivid and sharp, as if it just happened yesterday? It’s as though certain details become so clear, while others remain faint, yet all of them resurface with striking clarity. This experience of recalling moments can be just as intriguing as the way we visualize our memories. This meticulous concept is what drives the works in the exhibition “This is a long exposure” by Jeffery Hampshire and Julia Reising, inviting viewers to contemplate the fluid nature of time and memory through a lens of renewed perspectives. Hampshire, in particular, reflects on his everyday path, capturing both the familiar and the new. Through his work, he challenges traditional notions of time and memory, offering a conceptual exploration of how we define and revisit moments from our past.

Regardless of the viewer’s background, whether in fine arts or not, one of the most mesmerizing qualities of mixed media works is its ability to combine various materials that captivate attention and provoke curiosity about the deeper meanings behind the artwork. One of the first pieces to greet visitors at the gallery is Hampshire’s Orientation. This multimedia work blends inkjet prints, transparency film, and projection to explore the intersection of visual perception and spatial context. The piece consists of a grid of photographs mounted on the wall, with select images highlighted by projected light, adding depth and interaction. The images capture a range of urban and natural landscapes—street signs, trees, and industrial scenes—that offer snapshots of everyday life. These familiar scenes draw the viewer in, inviting them to engage with the artwork through a shared, relatable perspective. The transparency film distorts or enhances certain parts of the images, creating a sense of ambiguity and shifting perspectives. Meanwhile, the projections introduce a dynamic, ever-changing relationship between the viewer and the piece. The combination of crisp photographs, transparent yet vivid films, and bright but blurry projections sparks curiosity about how these elements work together to represent Hampshire’s interpretation of time.

Let’s take a deeper look at the work. The grid of images, films, and projections is intentionally interrupted by gaps—empty spaces that prompt the viewer to question their purpose. Hampshire himself has explained that the empty spaces in the piece reflect his own perception of time and space, symbolizing the unfilled areas where new memories and experiences will eventually take shape. These spaces serve as a visual metaphor for the fluidity of time, where moments yet to come will fill in the blanks of our personal histories.

The varying mediums used in the artwork represent different dimensions of Hampshire’s own journey through time. The projections, for example, evoke memories that are faint and blurry, much like fragments of recollections that linger in the back of the mind—vivid enough to remind us they exist, but elusive and difficult to fully recall. The transparency films, on the other hand, present memories that are somewhere in between: they are not entirely distant but remain just out of clear reach, hinting at experiences that are not fully tangible yet. Finally, the crisp photographs act as the clearest and most immediate memories—those moments that are sharp, vivid, and unmistakably alive in the mind’s eye. By combining these three distinct layers of time—blurred, semi-transparent, and sharply defined—Hampshire essentially creates a mind map of his journey. The entire piece, with its intricate interplay of mediums, suggests how time unfolds in layers, and how our memories, like pieces of a puzzle, come together over the course of our lives.

Together, these elements invite us to think about how we navigate the spaces around us and how our memories—both clear and fragmented—shape how we experience time. Hampshire’s Orientation encourages us to reflect on how we see ourselves in relation to both the past and the present. It’s a fascinating way to think about the journey we all take through life. If you’re curious to explore this theme further, come visit the gallery, as there are other incredible works that speculate similar ideas. 

More of Jeffery Hampshire’s works are included in the exhibition of This is a long exposure at the STAMP Gallery in Stamp Student Union of the University of Maryland from April 23rd to May 21st.

Current Exhibition

Dissolving Boundaries in Architectural Vestiges

This Is A Long Exposure from April 23 to May 21, 2025 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Oliver Foley

Throughout my time as a docent at the Stamp Gallery, I have been fascinated by the gallery’s most notable architectural quirk: a short hallway ending in a door that never opens. Behind the wall which greets visitors as they enter the gallery lies this hallway, a subspace enclosed on three sides with a gap at the top allowing in ambient light from the primary space. This space exists in service of a door which must exist, yet is unused, like a vestigial organ of the building as a whole. The resultant alcove, often indirectly illuminated, serves as the perfect vessel for pieces which create artificial spaces. Permeation (2025) by Jeffery Hampshire is one such piece, making use of the auditory isolation and low light level to transport the viewer into a spatial imaginary.

Permeation (2025) by Jeffery Hampshire

Like an architectural womb, the nook insulates the viewer from the exhibition as a whole. Two large white curtains hang from the wall, obscuring the vestigial door behind the semi-transparent fabric. Behind this curtain is a projection of a scene through a window, alternating between the two sides of the virtual window. Along with each perspective is audio, the sounds of birds and nature when looking outside, and the sounds of plates, footsteps, and household movement when looking in. This audio corresponds to what is on the other side of the window, subverting the intuitive expectation. This subversion was not immediately obvious, yet reflects the unique role of the window to transport the user out of the space they are in. There is a distinctly peaceful quality to this piece; it feels like a moment frozen in time being viewed from an abstractly omniscient angle. The walls of the alcove shield the viewer from the ambient sounds of the building, transporting them into an imaginary space beyond a physical space.

Permeation (2025) by Jeffery Hampshire

Two projections appear: a crisp, defined image on the wall behind the curtain, and a diffuse, fuzzy image on the curtain itself. The projection takes on the materiality of the curtain and imbues it with a soft glow, giving the illusion of natural light through a window. Alluding to the title of the piece, it is not the direct projection which sells the atmosphere, but the radiance created by its permeation through the fabric. In the sterility of a gallery environment, softness in light is oftentimes lost in pursuit of clear visibility, yet the darkness of this liminal-vestigial vestibule harbors the luminous subtlety of Hampshire’s piece. The realism of soft light is present within the projection, too: the light sources in the virtual spaces themselves permeate through semi-translucent media. When looking in, a lampshade blunts the lightbulb, and the view out into nature is lit diffusely by sunlight through a tree. The window acts as the inversion of reality, a door which is visually impenetrable and functionally inaccessible. Jeffery Hampshire’s Permeation not only creates spaces, but portals into these spaces which transcend the limitations of the gallery setting.

Stamp Gallery is a modular space, whose layout and flow of movement changes dramatically with each exhibition. Moveable walls and track lights create a blank slate for each exhibition’s unique demands. Yet, the back micro-hallway remains constant, an inner space which surrounds and immerses the viewer. Permeation masterfully engages with this architectural oddity, elevating it beyond a simple video booth by harnessing the inherent liminality of the corridor. The boundary dissolves between real and imagined, inside and outside, light and shadow; Hampshire’s work illuminates the beautiful mundane of the window as a threshold. 

Current Exhibition

And I am Happy to Have Been Here Before: An Exploration of Repetition and Liminality in Julia Reising’s Linoleum Room

This is a long exposure from April 23 to May 21, 2025 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James

Déjà vu is a phenomenon very few are unfamiliar with. The sensation that one has been somewhere or experienced something before often creates an uneasy feeling within its host. This disruption of thinking is abrupt and yet fleeting- leaving just as quickly as it came. In Julia Reising’s looping short film This is a Long Exposure, she combines prose and image to examine the overlap between movement, time, and the illusion of recall. Through the various frames of the video, Reising herself or objects such as a chair and lamp are seen interacting with a red linoleum box adorned with a tile-like pattern, a mobile corner. The piece then appears again in two inkjet photographs titled Linoleum Room Landscape One and Two, which are positioned as if in conversation with one another—each on opposing walls that converge to create a corner. Though the box is present, it is intangible—never appearing in its palpable form. Its absence highlights the idea of liminality: and poses the question of “how can we feel familiarity despite never being present with something?”

Reising in a still from This is a Long Exposure, 2025, video

Since Albert Einstein first theorized that time was relative and nonlinear, but rather conceptualized through culture, not much has changed in our own human interpretations of how it functions. The human brain struggles to understand time in any way other than moving in a straight line. Our cycles influence this: all living things are born and die, an eternal circle. In This is a Long Exposure, Julia Reising plays with both time and space- challenging the way we perceive it. She questions whether anything can ever truly be still in our dimensional universe, and how medium, environment, and cyclicality can be reconciled. 

The words that accompany the visual scenes of the video add a layer to the narrative Reising is building. It both starts and ends with Reising saying the phrase “And I am happy to have been here before,” intentionally inducing a sense of déjà vu within the viewer. She then comments on the foreign feeling the box activates, saying “unfamiliar. A door, a cornice moulding, a chair, a lamp.” She makes the viewer question their perception of domestic objects through their positioning in the corner, as well as our perception of where these objects fit into a space.

The diptych prints enhance this message. In one, the box is set against a green, leafy landscape, the shadow of the photographer and a branch visible and almost bleeding onto it. In the other, the box is the only object set against a stark, white wall- giving the opportunity for it to gain the viewer’s full attention. The simple backgrounds allow for reflection and for the feeling of intimacy with this inanimate object to continue to fester. By the end of the video and upon leaving the gallery, the viewer feels intrinsically tied to this intangible concept- a concept that encapsulates both the physical and the metaphorical. The ways we experience the metaphysical can be translated onto a smaller scale, as they have in this exhibition. 

Julia Reising, Linoleum Room Landscape (One and Two), 2025, inkjet print diptych

The reason humans are so rigid in our unwillingness to perceive time in a nonlinear way is that it disrupts our cultural creations of life and the universe. We find meaning in these systems and their strict nature, something so cemented that we don’t understand how to exist without them. Reising seeks to meld the familiar and unfamiliar into one, pushing the bounds of what is and what could be- that one can be somewhere and nowhere all at once, that we can truly accept the message “and I am happy to have been here before.”

Julia Reising’s work is included in This is a long exposure at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 23 to May 21, 2025

For more information on Julia Reising, visit https://www.juliareising.com/.

Artist Interviews, Current Exhibition

Why aren’t you here?

This is a long exposure from April 23 to May 12, 2025 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Trinitee Tatum

In the quiet between moments, between internal ideas to realized words and actions, Julia Reising listens. Her work— part sculpture, part language, wholly attentive— asks us to consider not just what we see, but what we sense in the periphery, what lingers in the edges of our minds and our environments. Through tile, text, wood, and gesture, she maps the topography of home, the self, memory, and meaning.

As the exhibition title suggests, This is a long exposure– a line taken from Reising’s personal writing– the stillness and contemplation within her work emerge from the act of waiting and watching closely, mirroring the slow revelation of detail in long exposure photography, where what is hidden at first gradually becomes visible. Thus, Reising moves at the speed of the careful capture of light. Her work dwells on the overlooked, the unnoticed. Radiators, wooden banisters, linoleum floors: these architectural fragments, often existing without much fanfare, become in her hands conduits for cultural signifiers and unspoken values. She is interested in how objects and ideas hold us and how we hold onto them; what we inherit not just instinctively, but also spatially. What we pass down through the corners of our homes, the language of domesticity, the invisible codes of belonging and power.

Still from This is a long exposure (2025), Video.

Tiles reappear throughout her work in This is a long exposure like punctuation. Cool, ordered, repeatable. It speaks to both industry and intimacy, of bathrooms and boardrooms, kitchens and clinics. In one piece, a red “linoleum” corner, a meticulous replica of beloved studio flooring now long gone, appears only in photographs and video— its physicality left out of the gallery space entirely. The absence is the point. What is not there feels expansive and loud, an omnipresent force making its presence known. It is, in part, about control. About the visibility of power, and the spaces it occupies silently. Her work is full of such inversions. Stillness brushes up with animation. Emptiness becomes form. Decay is immortal. 

Branch (Green and Blue) (2025), Branch, grout, ceramic tile, wood.

Reising molds and casts not just objects, but echoes, memories. Tree limbs and stumps contend with tiles, drawing precarious lines and alliances between nature and manufacture. The result is often eerie, liminal, familiar, yet unsettled. Memory, too, plays in this register. Not memory as in strictly nostalgia, but as structure. What stirs memory into being? How does context shape what we remember, and what quietly slips away? Reising uproots sentimentality and instead holds space for the complexity of recollection, contemplating the idea of self-affirmation and the existence of multiple truths. Memory here is not a return, but a reframing.

Exhibition View of Linoleum Room Landscape (One and Two) (2025) and Stump (2025).

Collaboration extends this inquiry outward, becoming a way of grappling with the in/visibility of power and control. It’s about the give and take, about depending on someone else to help you affirm what is reality, our perception of reality, our memory of reality. There is a deep humility and vulnerability in this. A willingness to admit that we do not shape the world alone, that our truths are numerous, that meaning is not fixed but fluid. Reising’s work makes room for this. For uncertainty, for multiplicity, for the poetry that happens when form and thought meet halfway.

As an architectural practitioner of feeling, Reising builds with absence as much as substance. Her materials speak, but they also listen. Her objects point to what is evident but not always seen. Her spaces remember. Her words extend. To view her work is to step into a kind of threshold, the in-between of the visible and the vanished. And it is there, in that hushed middle ground, that her art takes shape, not as a statement, but as an offering.

Julia Reising’s work is included in This is a long exposure at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 23 to May 12, 2025

For more information on Julia Reising, visit https://www.juliareising.com/.

Current Exhibition

Seeing Beyond the Glass: Reframing Materiality in Suspension

This is a long exposure from April 23 to May 21, 2025 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Olivia DiJulio 

When viewing and creating digital art, how can we see beyond the glass? With image-making, how can we elevate the flat nature of screens? Transcending the medium of the digital realm, This is a long exposure explores the methods and artistic revisions in reframing environments and reshaping the everyday with digital and analog means. 

Photography, videography, and digital projection are deeply integrated in this exhibit as central conveyors of time. These mediums are concentrated on generating and controlling visual phenomena. The camera and the lens have the power to capture light into a still image, and putting those images together in a sequence creates the motion picture. However, there is often a predictability in the traditional presentation of video feeds. In a hyper-digitized world, the novelty of screens has become an everyday interaction. As users of technology, there has been a standard expectation of clarity and instantaneous feedback.

Suspension by Jeffery Hampshire aims to reconfigure these notions of viewing into sources of motion, angles, and change. The piece features four monitors, each with custom acrylic castings to mount the transparent film. Both the acrylic mountings and film have a digital quality to them, almost replicating refresh effects of CRT TVs. The film itself was made using inkjet printing techniques, and is the highlight of this work. Each video feed features looping video feeds of suburban sights. There is something inherently human and man-made, featuring construction, architecture, a fallen e-bike, and a small forest clearing. The familiar sights combined with the unorthodox presentation create a unique composition within the genre of video installations.

Jeffery Hampsire, Suspension, 2025, 22” displays, transparency film, cast acrylic

Video art as a medium speaks to the very form of light. In combination with film and physical optics, Hampshire works by rebending, refracting, and changing our perspective of reality. Rather than just isolating the feed, the negative and positive space created with the film forms new dimensions to the piece. The contrast between the video feed and the transparent film seeks to form optical tension. The literal layering of images also speaks to the processes of filmmaking and digital art creation. Digital artists often work in layers to have control over the independent aspects of the piece. Layers are meant to be invisible, unnoticed, and embedded into an artwork. However, Suspension turns this workflow into a tangible outcome, by refracting and distorting the video feed below.  

Quite fully, there is a visual hierarchy at play. The physical barriers and materiality of the film used in Suspension challenge the viewer to reconsider the ways we perceive the world. The film, being transparent, is not necessarily erasing what is there, but recontextualizing it into an ever changing viewing experience. It is more so an interruption rather than a deletion. You will never get the full image when looking at the piece head-on, and viewers are encouraged to move and find the spaces between the video and material. 

Hampshire challenges the traditional linearity of observing video installations by adding additional visual depth to his work. Exploring the transformative nature of video, he promotes the ideals of the ever changing states of reality. Our environments will never be static, and neither is the dynamic form of video and multimedia works. Rather, there is always motion in the perceived stillness of the mundane. Suspension emphasizes the role of physical materials in shaping how we understand time and imagery. The physical materials remind us that what we see can always be filtered by tools and contexts. Through this lens, Hampshire opens up a broader conversation about the optics of perception, questioning not just what we see, but how we can reconsider the driving factors of attention and perception in the world around us.

Jeffery Hampshire and Julia Reising’s work is included in This is a long exposure at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 23 to May 21. For more information on these artists, find them at https://www.instagram.com/j.hampshire_art/ and https://www.juliareising.com. For more information on This is a long exposure and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.

Current Exhibition

Cyclicality And GIS Structuring In Jeffery Hampshire’s Orientation

This Is A Long Exposure from April 23rd to May 12th, 2025, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho

Pinned to the front wall that greets visitors entering the STAMP Gallery are dozens of photos taken by Jeffery Hampshire in print, film, or as projections that comprise Orientation (2025). Another set of photographs in print and film which are stapled together in a triangle, and another film-printed photo of power lines oriented in a tube-like composition sit on a podium in front of the wall. Together, they act as a representation of the cyclical relationship between humans and nature, and by extension, memories of space and place. 

Hampshire places a lot of emphasis on the centrality of travel in Orientation. For humans, pictures of roads, trash that is waiting to be collected, an abandoned bike, and books from a Little Free Library represent the transition through the space between to points. For nature, pictures of bike trails, trees, overgrowth, and rocky paths showcase the other side of the cycle. Together, they create a dynamic in which trash travels between humans who create it and nature, before presumably returning to humans in the form of recycled items, lest it be abandoned like the abandoned bike or lone trash can under a tree. 

Jeffery Hampshire, Orientation, 2025. Inkjet print, transparency film, projection. Photo Credit: James Cho

Furthermore, Hampshire adds more depth to his take on travel in relation to space and place by using multiple mediums to display the photos. Namely, the pictures that are physically nailed to the wall tell the story of the connection between human trash and nature, as well as the space between them. Meanwhile, the photos printed onto film represent the deterioration of memory about that cycle. As one travels from place to place, the time that it takes to travel across the space between two points results in a slow loss of memory of these physical places. Hence, the film represents memories of places that are beginning to be lost to time, as seen in how some of there are empty spaces between the print, film, and projected photos where additional photos (i.e. memories) of places might have once existed. 

How then, might we maintain these memories? How can we lessen the impact that space has on “understood memory” and the memories that Hampshire has pinned to the gallery’s walls? Through the projected photos. More specifically, through the medium that they represent: Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS software, in short, is a field where hardware and software capture, store, and visualise geographic data. Images of specific places are captured through Light Detection and Ranging devices (LiDAR) like mounted cameras, that are used to scan different points around a space to recreate 3D rendered structures on a computer. In Orientation’s case, this means capturing different points along the biking trail that Hampshire travels along. Things like power poles, biking and pedestrian signs, and sewage tunnels that are either on or visible from the biking trail are captured in this way and then projected onto the wall. Thus, Hampshire implies that though we may lose our memories, or attempt to store imitations of them in film as a form of reconstructed memories, by collecting geographic data we can maintain near-exact replicas of our memories to better understand them.

This expression of the distance between points in a cycle and how memories of them are retained in works like Orientation embodies the idea of playing with “still life in motion”. The pictures, whatever their medium may be, reinforce the notion that time is the “keystone” needed for their production while also being the factor that leads to the deterioration of memory. Hampshire’s work offers three new ways in which our environments are reconstructed and preserved through images: through inkjet-printed photos, film, and GIS reconstructions, which are projected onto a surface or screen. Altogether, Orientation can be understood as a culmination of A Long Exposure, encapsulating the prolonged and evolving interaction between people and their environments over time.

Current Exhibition, Uncategorized

Unlocking Stories Beyond: The Open Narratives of Schroeder Cherry’s Mixed Media Art

Written by Jasjot Kaur

How do unwanted objects, sign language, and keys become a language that transcends the frames of an artwork, inviting reflection on personal stories? Schroeder Cherry’s art is not about prescribing a single narrative but about offering an open-ended conversation that resonates with those willing to pause, observe, and engage. His work speaks beyond the African diaspora, inviting all viewers to find meaning within the layers of repurposed materials, folklore, and memory.

Cherry’s mixed-media assemblages on wood embrace storytelling inspired by travel, history, and real and reimagined events. His pieces hold multiple interpretations.  Cherry’s use of sign language and alphabet, spelling out specific words that connect to the work’s title, acts as both a riddle and a guide, nudging viewers toward understanding the arts concept without dictating what they should see. The harmony of pictorial and materials makes his art into a language medium that transcends words, across the stories of the African diaspora allowing each individual to bring their own lived experiences and an opportunity to learn from another.

One of the most striking elements in Cherry’s art is using keys. They symbolize access—both the power to lock and to unlock. “Everybody I know has at least one key they’ve had for more than a year and don’t know what it belongs to,” Cherry reflects. A key, seemingly insignificant in isolation, gains new life within his compositions, provoking curiosity and introspection. Keys are one of those overlooked items that are a part of our everyday lives, but we do not realize their importance unless we lose it. It prompts the question: What doors, both literal and metaphorical, have we left locked or forgotten? What memories remain suppressed but, if lost, would trouble us? What stories, memories, and emotions, though left behind in the past, still haunt us?

His mixed media art encourages a slow engagement—something rare in a fast-paced world—and urges viewers to pause, observe, and reflect. Recently,  I witnessed a family with young children embodying this philosophy. While looking at the Adam and Eve Enter the Garden 2024 piece, the parents encouraged their children to share what they saw and thought and how they might create something similar. The kids gravitated toward the colors, the recognizable objects like shells and the sparkle of the beads, and the sense of playfulness—all of which sparked curiosity and storytelling. One kid said it reminded them of upcycling, to which the parents suggested working on something similar at home. The parents realized they had lost touch with the arts and crafts activities they used to enjoy in their home garage—a special way they bonded with their children. Found materials in Cherry’s art serve as personal and collective memory touchstones. For one family, the shells and beads recalled childhood arts and crafts, summer beach days, and family traditions. The materials transcend as they may symbolize something deeply personal—an object tied to a specific moment or feeling.

By repurposing commonly found yet unused materials like wood, hardware, locks, and other household objects, Cherry creates sculptural paintings that feel introspective and transcend beyond the frames. There is a sense of familiarity yet mystery—a push and pull between the recognizable and the unknown. His background in puppetry and painting allows him to blur the lines between functional and non-functional forms, placing viewers at a crossroads. What is this material for? What is this story, and whose story is it? Do I have a role to play in it? 

Cherry often receives keys from people who visit his exhibitions—an exchange of objects that carry unknown pasts. For those who stop to look closely, the sensory experience of his work can unlock memories, traumas, beliefs, and fears hidden within themselves. His boundless frames extend beyond the canvas, reaching many people who belong to the story, inviting them to add their chapters.

Everyone has a story—a unique, incomplete story—one that is constantly unfolding.

Next time you visit Schroeder Cherry’s exhibition, take a moment. Look closely. Ask questions. What stories will you uncover?

Schroeder Cherry’s work is included in Open Ended Narratives: at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from February 18 to April 5, 2025. For more information on Schroeder Cherry’s work, visit https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/schroedercherry.  For more information on Open Ended Narratives: and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.

Current Exhibition

The Aesthetic of Innocence

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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 Trinitee Tatum

For a fleeting moment, opening the wooden doors to Schroeder Cherry’s Adam and Eve Enter the Garden (2024) evokes the sensation of stepping into an old church, where, upon looking up, the heavens reveal angels and saints in divine splendor. Cherubs, plump, childlike, and almost always white, fill the walls and domes, shooting arrows, dancing, and playing tiny instruments. They have long symbolized love, purity, and divine favor. Yet, their racial uniformity, often unnoticed, subtly reinforces whiteness as synonymous with innocence– an aesthetic tradition ingrained over millennia.

Adam and Eve Enter the Garden (2024), Mixed media on wood.

At first glance, Adam and Eve Enter the Garden does not overtly replicate this imagery. However, through this work, Cherry establishes a recurring engagement with religious iconography throughout the exhibition. In dialogue with other works, it prompts viewers to interrogate the aesthetics of innocence: who is afforded it, and at whose expense.

Future Voter Series, Cute to Criminal (2023), Mixed media on wood.

Positioned alongside Adam and Eve Enter the Garden, Future Voter Series: Cute to Criminal (2023) more directly confronts the implicit right to cuteness and innocence. Centered around a portrait of a young Black boy, Cherry employs symbols of keys, cards, and a clock to evoke themes of access, play, and time. The boy’s youth, once deemed “cute,” is slipping away as time ticks forward. Here, Cherry forces viewers into a moment of reckoning, compelling them to meet the boy’s gaze and answer his pleading question: At what age do I go from Cute to Criminal?

Angel Sconce #15 for 2 Candles (2025), Mixed media on wood.

Completing this visual and thematic trinity, Angel Sconce #15 for 2 Candles (2025), adjacent to the previous works, confronts the violent erasure of Blackness in both sacred and secular spaces. The figure, though visibly older than the boy in Future Voter Series: Cute to Criminal, remains too young to have died of natural causes. His vibrant royal purple halo and wings contrast sharply with the unspoken tragedy of his loss, prompting viewers to ask who, or what, took his life. Cherry’s sconces, designed to carry light both literally and symbolically, illuminate the systemic omission of Blackness from spaces of sanctity. Often found in family and home altars, these objects serve as sites of remembrance, honoring the departed with photographs, flowers, candles, and offerings. In this context, the sconce functions as both a memorial and a challenge to dominant narratives of purity and innocence.

Church altars, historically adorned with white angelic figures, have not only been places of worship but also instruments of religious and social hierarchy, where whiteness is positioned as pure, and thus superior. The racialized aesthetics of innocence, reinforced through sacred art and colonial missionary work, further entrenched these exclusionary structures. Yet, while churches have historically upheld these ideologies, they have also been sites of resistance. Many churches and religious leaders have actively challenged these racial hierarchies, transforming places of worship into spaces of activism, upliftment, and radical inclusion.

Cherry’s work lays bare these erasures, challenging viewers to reckon with the deeper implications of racialized innocence and exclusion. Through his assemblages, he exposes the historical frameworks that have dictated who is seen, who is protected, and who is rendered invisible. Yet, his work is not just about absence; it is also about reclamation. By inserting Black figures into spaces from which they have long been excluded, Cherry redefines the visual language of sanctity, innocence, and remembrance. His work urges us to question the narratives we inherit and, more importantly, to imagine new ones, ones that acknowledge, honor, and illuminate the lives too often overlooked.

Open Ended Narratives: Mixed Media Assemblages on Wood by Schroeder Cherry is exhibited at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from February 18 to April 5, 2025. 

For more information on Schroeder Cherry, visit https://www.instagram.com/schroeder.cherry/.