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.
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.
Open Ended Narratives from February 18th to April 5th, 2025, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James
Just as the cogs of a machine must fit together seamlessly to work, an exhibition must build and mesh into something greater than the individual pieces. In Schroeder Cherry’s current show, Open Ended Narratives, the themes emerge like threads, twisting together to create a fluid experience. While certain motifs show up consistently throughout pieces, the Baltimore-based artist is adamant that he has no interest in telling one story. “There is no one story; viewers bring their own experiences to each piece,” Cherry writes in his artist statement.
The idea that an artist has one message they are attempting to convey is simplistic and confining, as art can mean many things to different people. However, this is not to say that these thematic elements have no context outside of the viewer’s own. The image of the watermelon pops up more than seventeen times throughout the works displayed at the gallery. If the viewer has no knowledge of the historical context Cherry is referencing, the significance of the symbol may go unnoticed.
The watermelon stereotype first emerged in the Southern United States in the 1860s, shortly after the end of the Civil War and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Former enslavers and Confederate sympathizers were flailing to combat the beginnings of the Reconstruction era, and observing that many formerly enslaved people were growing watermelons on their farms for profit, created a caricature to represent African Americans as immature and dirty. Over time this farce of a statement worked its way into generations of people, becoming a belief that many learned casually through subliminal messages. It appeared in caricatures on children’s television shows and other representations of minstrelsy. In contemporary history, politicians continue to push this stereotype among others to draw in racist supporters.
Unfortunately, the original meaning of the watermelon has become tainted with these narratives, but the African diaspora has worked to restore its original meaning in the community. Before white supremacists got their hands on the symbol of the watermelon, it stood as a message of liberation and autonomy for formerly enslaved individuals in the South. Cherry’s work reclaims the image, raising it into idolatry, a symbol of resistance, while also planting the seeds for a more positive interpretation of it for current and future Black children.
In Cherry’s piece Twins (Future Voter Series), the watermelon takes the form of the two young girls’ swimsuits. They stand with their arms around each other, beaming at an invisible camera. They are proud of their swimsuits, making no effort to hide and instead exuding excitement over being seen in them. While each viewer is invited to add their own details to these girls’ stories, it cannot be said that they yet understand the burden of the stereotype. They become a symbol of hope for the present, that we may someday completely filter out the muddled narrative created by hate, and return it to its revolutionary roots.
Schroeder Cherry, Future Voters #12, Twins, 2021, mixed media on wood.
The question of divinity is also raised in Cherry’s wall sconce pieces, which depict Black figures as one of the holiest symbols in Christianity: angels. Combining this with the symbol of the watermelon, most notably in the piece Angel Sconce #11, Red Wings, which features the image prominently throughout. Angels are also a symbol with a racist past, often depicting the ideals of whiteness as divine and darker skin as evil. By synthesizing these broader motifs into a piece that seems to reach outward with its curling pieces and a serious face that stares back at you, Cherry continues to weave together strings that connect the ideas of the past and present to those of the future.
Schroeder Cherry, Angel Sconce #11, Red Wings, 2024, mixed media on wood.
Through these works, Cherry takes the history of a harmful stereotype into his hands and melds it into a poetic emblem of joy for the African diaspora. These symbols contribute to the building of a foundation for the narratives that Cherry threads the needle for but never ties off the stitch.
Open Ended Narratives from February 18th to April 5th, 2025, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Noa Nelson
Schroeder Cherry’s mixed-media assemblages do more than capture a moment in time—they interrogate the ways history, culture, and personal experience intersect. Using found objects like keys, locks, playing cards, and discarded picture frames, Cherry constructs layered compositions that question who has access to spaces, how identity is framed by society, and what stories are remembered or erased. His work invites viewers to engage actively, bringing their own interpretations and histories into the narrative.
Traditionally, frames act as boundaries, defining the edges of an image and enclosing it within a fixed space. But in Cherry’s work, frames are more than decorative—they become part of the story. They act as textured, layered elements that shape how we move through an image, drawing attention to what is included, what is left out, and how we are meant to engage with the subject matter.
Shroeder Cherry, Salvador Series #8, Desejar (Wish), 2024. Mixed media on wood; 32 x 24 inches. Photo Credit: Júlia Sodré
Cherry often acquires frames from a framer friend, repurposing discarded samples and integrating them into his work. This use of found materials mirrors the larger themes of his assemblages: history is not static, and objects—like stories—carry meaning beyond their intended function. His frames don’t just enclose a narrative, they challenge viewers to consider how images are constructed and how context shapes perception.
One of Cherry’s recurring themes is the adultification of Black children—the societal tendency to perceive Black youth as older, less innocent, and more responsible for their actions than their
white peers. His work forces us to confront the unsettling question: At what age does a Black child transition from being seen as a child to being perceived as a threat?
This question is particularly poignant when viewed through Cherry’s layered, textured compositions. His frames become both a protective border and a confining structure, much like the ways society simultaneously scrutinizes and controls Black bodies. By incorporating objects like playing cards—a metaphor for the unpredictability of life and the unequal hands dealt to individuals—Cherry highlights the systemic biases that dictate how Black children are viewed and treated in different spaces.
Cherry’s travels, particularly to Salvador, Brazil, have deeply influenced his work. As home to the largest population of African diaspora outside of Africa, Salvador’s history is inseparable from colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the ongoing complexities of race and identity.
Shroeder Cherry, Salvador Series #2, Four Drummers, 2024. Mixed media on wood; 33 x 32.5 inches. Photo Credit: Júlia Sodré
In his work, Cherry integrates symbols of access—keys and locks—to question who is permitted entry into certain spaces and who is kept out. A small bucket at his desk collects donated materials, later incorporated into his pieces, reinforcing the idea that history is built from what is left behind. His depictions of barbershops—intimate spaces of community and vulnerability—highlight places where Black men find both refuge and connection. The act of allowing another man to hold a razor to one’s throat speaks to an unspoken trust, a contrast to the often hyper-policed existence of Black men in public spaces.
Cherry’s use of playing cards underscores the unpredictability of life and the systemic structures that dictate opportunity. Cards hold different values depending on the game, just as people’s worth is often measured differently based on race, class, and circumstance. His works challenge viewers to consider: What do you do with the hand you’re dealt in life?
Similarly, keys function as a powerful metaphor for access and exclusion. Keys open doors, but they also lock them. They represent opportunity, security, and control—who gets to enter, who is kept out, and what barriers exist between individuals and the spaces they seek to inhabit. People form deep attachments to their keys, a subconscious acknowledgment of their importance in navigating daily life. By incorporating these objects into his work, Cherry asks us to consider the power structures that determine who holds the keys to opportunity and who remains locked out.
Shroeder Cherry, Salvador Series #3, Pausa, 2024. Mixed media on wood; 29 x 36 inches. Photo Credit: Júlia Sodré
Schroeder Cherry’s work is deeply layered, both visually and conceptually. His art challenges the ways identity is framed—how history, access, and systemic biases shape the experiences of Black communities. Through his use of mixed media, he reframes symbols often associated with exclusion, reclaiming them as tools of empowerment and storytelling.
Just as life unfolds in unpredictable chapters, Cherry’s work resists neat conclusions. His compositions remain open-ended, inviting viewers to bring their own stories, experiences, and interpretations into the frame. And in doing so, he reminds us that narratives are never static—they are constructed, challenged, and reframed with each new perspective.
While people are often drawn to noticeably ostentatious and obtrusive works that grab their attention right away, there is an undeniable pull toward the everyday familiar spaces and moments that feel deeply personal and universally relatable. Even from outside the Stamp Gallery, Schroeder Cherry’s exhibition Open Ended Narratives immediately captures the attention with its shimmering keys, locks, and metal elements. While Cherry intended to symbolize them as tools of access, these keys, reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumb trail, acting as symbolic markers and guiding visitors through Cherry’s thought-provoking works. These objects invite the viewer to piece together a personal narrative, intertwining connections between seemingly disparate elements of the exhibition. Like unlocking hidden layers of meaning, these objects encourage visitors to follow the visual and thematic threads throughout the gallery.
Upon entering the exhibition space, visitors are immersed in an array of distinct themes and series from Cherry’s collection, with the Barber Shop Series standing out as a particularly compelling piece of the narrative puzzle. This series, rich in both visuality and concept, extends beyond the literal barbershop setting, opening conversations on broader social and political themes. Everyday objects, such as playing cards and mirrors, prompt viewers to pause, reflect, and construct their own interpretations. How do communal spaces, like barbershops and hair salons, serve as cultural hubs for storytelling, social bonding, and the exchange of perspectives? And how does Cherry establish such a personal connection with the viewer through his intricate use of found objects?
Cherry’s artistic philosophy resonates deeply with my own approach to design—drawing inspiration from the everyday, the familiar, and the overlooked. The Barber Shop Series especially evokes a sense of nostalgia, curiosity, and warmth. Through this series, Cherry highlights the role of the Black barbershops as more than grooming spaces. They are social sites where Black men are gathered to exchange ideas, discuss social issues and build connections among their community. These spaces serve as the cultural cornerstone that extend beyond the barbershop. Before moving to America in fifth grade, one of my most familiar routines was accompanying my grandmother to her hair salon appointments. There, under the warmth of perm heat machines, neighborhood women gathered to chat and exchange everything from small talk to the biggest gossip in town. Though I often didn’t understand the full scope of their conversations, I instinctively recognized the salon as more than a place for hairstyling. It was a social hub, a space for connection, conversation, and shared experiences, even among strangers. When I first encountered Barber Shop Series #35, Shoot, I felt as if a book in my mind had flipped open to a long-forgotten chapter of my life—young memories that had quietly lingered in the back of my mind. It’s remarkable how art has the power to resurrect moments we never consciously preserved, bringing buried memories back to the surface.
While we may never fully know all of the meanings these objects have for Cherry, what remains clear is his ability to guide viewers toward personal meaning-making. In exploring the Barber Shop Series, I found that my way of “unlocking the locks” was reconnecting with deep, formative memories—realizing just how much emotion and significance are embedded in the everyday. Through nostalgia, curiosity, and artistic deliberation, ordinary spaces become extraordinary, revealing new layers of personal and collective history.
Visit our Stamp Gallery and explore Cherry’s works firsthand. As you move through the exhibition, consider this: What is your key to the locks? What memories, emotions, or connections do these pieces unlock for you? Art has a way of revealing stories we may not have realized we carried—what story will you uncover?
Open Ended Narratives: Mixed Media Assemblages on Wood by Schroeder Cherryfrom February 18 to April 5, 2025 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Olivia DiJulio
To start, could you tell me a bit about yourself and your background?
I grew up in Washington, D.C, and I’ve always been an arts kid. When I was a child, I played with blocks, very colorful wooden blocks. I also played with puppets. I received puppets as presents when I was very young in elementary school. In fact, I still have a puppet, I have a string marionette. I started off with hand puppets and then later I got into marionettes by third grade and fourth grade. I stopped playing with puppets when I was in junior high school because it just wasn’t a cool thing to do for high school kids. In college, I started working with puppets again and I like them. Someone introduced me to a puppet master in Chicago and I ended up apprenticing with him for a while.
When I was in school in D.C. I had the fortune of being exposed to university students from Howard University and they had put together a program called Workshops For Careers in the Arts. Although I was a visual artist, I hung out with the theater kids. I learned a lot from the theater kids, like the importance of rehearsals and preparation, but I knew I wasn’t one of them. I still apply those lessons today as a museum educator and also as an artist.
Do you have any experiences that have influenced your creative process?
I actually finished high school in Switzerland. I was an exchange student, and in my senior year I was taking art classes in Switzerland. I went to the Münchenstein high school, Gymnasium Münchenstein. I was exposed to how the Swiss went about doing their artwork, and that was much more regimented and formulaic, but in America it’s much more wide open. I really enjoy traveling and being lost in different cultures finding my way. There was a period where I would almost annually go to a different country just to immerse myself in another culture. How do you go about making your art when you’re exploring unfamiliar territory? All of that feeds into the art practice. Creativity is all about trying something different, something new, and I try to remind myself of that in the process.
Given the title of the exhibit, “Open Ended Narratives:” what draws you to create nonlinear stories for your work?
I’ll start off by sharing a proverb that I came across. It’s an Islamic phrase and it goes: Allah delights in truth, and varying degrees of truth, but even Allah does not like the entire truth. When I first read that, I had to meditate on it for a while. I realized, wow, this means that there is never one story. You know, Allah likes all truth, but never the absolute truth. There’s never one absolute truth.
With my works, although I might have a narrative in mind, what I appreciate is the visitor being able to look at the work and come up with their own narrative. Sometimes I try to eavesdrop in a gallery to hear what people are saying before I identify myself as the artist. When I come to actually hear what they’re saying, I get that unfiltered response. I would say one of the things I would like people to do is to take time with the work and to look at it. I don’t really expect people to love everything. That’s not my interest. What I really am more interested in is having them just be engaged with the work and come away with something.
That actually leads into our next point. I often hear this question of “can we separate the art from the artist?” What is your stance on art being inherently political, or art for the sake of art?
Now, I have to say, I had an experience recently in a gallery. It was about political movements and how people resist certain movements. There was this one person and she came to my work, looked at it for like a split second, saw some writing and said, “oh, propaganda.”Now, the piece itself was called Huddle, and it’s actually in the gallery right now. It’s of three teenage boys, they’re standing together and they’re on their phones and they’re communicating with each other. The text says “How Republican States Are Expanding Their Power Over Elections” so it would actually be talking about the political movement and what Republicans were doing. It wasn’t propaganda, it was news.
Schroeder Cherry, Future Voters #20, Huddle, 2022. Mixed Media on wood, 36 x 28.5 in.
The viewer brings their own baggage to the work. You can’t disengage from your own experiences when you’re looking at the work. Whatever their experiences are, they’re going to bring that to the piece. It’s always inherently political, because when an artist decides what they’re going to do, that’s an intention. It may or may not be political, but what they’re going through mentally can easily be either political or not.
The next question I want to address is, as a mixed-media artist, how do you decide on a medium? Is there a particular reason why you’re drawn to them?
The mixed media for me is something that evolved. I was trained as a painter so I painted on canvas, I drew on paper. But I got to a point where I was abusing the canvas. I realized I needed something that had a stronger foundation because then I was attaching objects. So I went to wood, but I didn’t go to wood as a sculptor. I went to wood as a painter who just wanted to work on a flat surface. As I jumped over to these flat panels, I moved into carving and using power tools to shape the edges. I didn’t want to create pieces with straight edges on all sides. That led me wanting to experiment with the texture inside the composition. I got more power tools, I got some burners, and then later I got jigsaws and other saws that allowed me to gouge into the piece.
How do you go about including the motifs and imagery we see in your work?
There are some things that repeatedly appear in my works and they include, keys, watermelons, playing cards and there may even be glass shards. The keys for me represent tools of access. Everybody I know has got at least one key that they’ve had for more than a year and don’t know what it belongs to. But they don’t want to give this key up. You can either close something up or you can open it up if you have the key, and the same thing goes with locks.
Watermelons for me, I’m reclaiming a negative, racist image as a positive one. First of all, I’m a vegetarian. I like watermelon. When I first moved to Baltimore in spring, it was the rainy season and there was a bumper crop of watermelons. I started eating melons every day, even for breakfast with a croissant. This is a very nutritious fruit and it has been maligned. I learned that historically, watermelons originated in continental Africa. You’ve got these different melons of different colors. In Maryland you have what you call sugar babies, and those melons are yellow on the inside. There’s a great variety of melons and even the seeds are beautiful. Doing a deep dive into the visual of the watermelon, I thought this is something really to work with and we need to pay attention to it.
I want to highlight again your puppeteering experience. That seems really important to you. What is it like as a role of a puppeteer when communicating information through that medium?
First and foremost, it’s a performance for the audience. No matter what shape the puppet is it could be anything. It could be a book. It could be a stone, but the purpose is its movement in the narrative. I’m doing two things when I’m working with puppetry. I am a visual artist because I’m sewing and constructing them, and I’m a performer because I’m manipulating them in a show. All puppeteers are hybrid artists. When you get a group of puppeteers together, they’ll start talking about their materials and their performances. That’s what they do, it’s about how you make it and how you perform it.
Do you have any stories of performing for older audiences? I feel like puppeteering usually gets associated with children.
Yeah, there’s a puppet. Her name is Ms. Lily, and she’s actually a puppet docent. I designed her when I was working at the Baltimore Museum of Art years ago and I wanted to create a safe place for adults to play. She’s got this white knit sweater, a red skirt, and black patent leather shoes. She became very, very popular because the adults knew that they could come play. She starts in the beginning and says “This is an adult tour. It’s not for children, if you have a child, please take them to the next room. There’s a workshop there, which is lovely for children, but this is not a tour for children.” That’s how she started the tour and then she would introduce me as her technician. I’m dressed in all black, so I’m fully visible. But she introduces me as her technician and she lets the audience know that if there are any questions, they are to be directed to her and not to the technician because the technician will not be speaking.
Ms. Lily, Puppet Art Docent, at Wits End Puppet Slam, Takoma Park, MD
Occasionally in Baltimore, we have what we call puppet slams. It’s when a group of puppeteers come together, usually anywhere from six to ten puppeteers or companies will come together and we’ll each have about five to eight minutes on stage. Sometimes those performances are more for adults than they are for children.
I think that is an amazing form of visual and performance art. Thank you for sharing your puppeteering and your mixed media processes. To wrap up our conservation, 10 years from now, where do you think you see yourself in your art?
I would say I hope to still be creating because I’m going to be one of those people who’s still creating when I’m 95, so I want to continue to do that. I would hope that I’m in a place where people are aware of my work and are enjoying it.
Thank you to Dr. Schroder Cherry for this interview, from the Stamp Gallery.
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.
We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity from October 16th to December 7th, 2024, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho
What is a home? Is it a shelter? A place where we are safe? Our families and friends? What happens when one becomes adrift, and in need of a new home? These are the questions that Sky Writing asks visitors when they enter the Gallery. Comprised of six panels draped from the ceiling along the Gallery’s window display, visitors can walk through the array of panels that each contain different prints inspired by submissions from international students attending UMD as well as Tori Ellison’s artwork, in collaboration UMD MFA Candidate Varvara Tokareva.
The first and third panels display a bird species called Swifts who spend much of their time in the air, migrating from place to place as they continuously seek new shelters. Complimenting this, the back side of the panel contains 7,139 words for “shelter” in spoken languages, and 293 in written languages from across the world. Together, they represent immigrants in the historical narrative of the US wherein those seeking a new home, shelter, and economic stability come to the States as “birds of passage” much like the airborne Swifts on the panels. A narrative that has always fluctuated, and one that in light of recent years become more prominent, making spaces like our University where many immigrants or second-generation can find and take shelter a lifeline for many, where they can freely express their languages and cultures.
Specifically, Natalie Molina highlights how immigrants in the US have very often been treated as these “birds of passage” – brazos fuertes – who since the 1910s come from overseas or land to get a job, before being sent back to their home countries only to repeat the cycle over again (Molina 163). The unity in the languages included on the panels thus acts as a cry against being a swift or bird species that is in a constant state of placelessness. They represent the desire to find a home, a shelter, the desire held by international students like those who contributed to Sky Writing to have stability and define their own identities beyond the label of ‘immigrant’.
Tori Ellison, Sky Writing, 2024. Screenprinting, paper, paint and wood, 8 1/2 x 36 in each.
But what does “home” mean for international students attending UMD? The second and fourth panels are based on contributions from UMD students and College Park community members who provide answers to that inquiry. Three phrases are displayed on the second panel as answers to Ellison’s question. The consensus was that “home” could be anything from a house, a sense of belonging, a neighbourhood community, and oftentimes chosen family. The fourth panel is a few short statements written in Japanese by a student attending UMD, who highlights similar views about how home is a place of safety, and how irreplaceable it is to them since to have a home is to be whole.
Having lived outside of the US for much of my childhood, viewing other students’ responses in Sky Writing, particularly the back of the first and the front of the second panel hit home for me. I grew up mainly in Singapore (among other countries), and looking through Ellison’s piece felt both nostalgic and uplifting. Going to an international school where children would often only stay for a year before leaving through elementary and middle school, I got to interact with so many people from very different backgrounds, especially at school festivals, while also experiencing the “bird of passage” loss when friends would move away. Seeing the unity in the hundreds of words for “shelter”, as well as how other students like myself valued the need to have a sense of belonging, stability, and oftentimes chosen family due to the nature of moving to new places so regularly, was reassuring and validating. It also pressed the importance of places like the University, where immigrants can feel safe and find communities on campus at places like MICA, the multicultural centre, and the vast amount of student unions or organisations for Latine, Asian and Pacific Islanders that celebrate their identities as a home-like place.
This, combined with Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet 94” on the fifth panel, and Varvara Tokareva’s print on the sixth panel, again answers the question that Ellison puts forward about what home means to us. That the lack of a shelter, a home to return to in order to find comfort, whether that home is a place or a person, creates a sense of exile, isolation, and colourlessness. Together, all six panels in Sky Writing highlight the necessity of a home that pervades every other artwork in We Live in the Sky since each panel highlights how UMD students and College Park residents value home and how it defines their identity, and how the disruption or displacement of their home destroys their sense of self and belonging, because without a home to shelter in they would be just like a swoop of swifts coasting through the skies.
The dress is a staple of clothing history. Its form is associated with femininity, adornment, beauty, and formality. Tori Ellison has historically worked with the dress motif since the 1990s, using them thematically for self-perception and bodily identities. As seen with her other featured dress piece, Burnt Dress (1993) embodies the ideas of restoration and rebirth through charred remains. The contrasting outlines serve as a reminder of the past and room for new beginnings.
Tori Ellison, Burnt Dress, 1993, Drawing, Charcoal, Acrylic Polymer, Ash, and Fabric on Paper, 50 x 38 in.
Ellison continues to explore this shape with Shell (2010), a wall-mounted paper dress sculpture. Shell immediately captures attention the way it “floats” on display, as if it’s worn by an invisible being. There is an indisputable mystery and allure surrounding the piece’s voice. We Live in the Sky features Ellison’s interpretation of metamorphosis through Shell’s commentary on personal growth and discovery.
Tori Ellison, Shell, 2010, Paper, Wire, and Acrylic, app. 5.5 x 45 x 2 in.
We Live in the Sky includes works with the spoken and written word. With accompanying textual pieces like Ellison’s Sky Writing (2024) and Windows in the Sky (2024), Shell stands out as a piece without words. However, Ellison still gives the dress a voice of its own. Immediately, viewers will notice the spaces carved out within the layered paper. The positive and negative spaces that the paper dress occupies call for a larger inquiry about the intention of this piece. Though its exterior beauty is its main element, it is also important to note the interiors. The organic shapes, layering, and curves of the dress create an invitation instead of a rejection. Ellison’s piece finds itself in a space of temporariness. Shifting localities and movement as the paper medium adapts to the surrounding air. Despite the stillness of the room, Shell stands unafraid. It commands a certain vibe that almost asks for one to keep looking. Like the shells you may find on the beach, Shell’s pearlized surface is a delicate exterior holding untold stories inside.
Shell gives its paper fabric a new form outside of its traditional 2D planes. Perhaps it serves as a literal shell for interpretation. Can we see ourselves inside the dress? Even the name Shell, implies an emptiness to be filled. In a space about displacement and identity, what can our exterior and interior selves find within Shell? Can we find a home in spaces unconventional to us? Beyond gendered clothing, Shell offers a found shield against the changing world. It provides the mind a space to grow into, a hidden place to house one’s vulnerabilities, secrets, and memories.
Since the beginning of human history, paper has been used to account. It is not far off to assume that paper and humanity are deeply intertwined. In line with conversations surrounding transformation, it leads to a major question: how does paper align with the self? The properties of paper can be closely associated with conceptualizing consciousness since paper can be created, changed, and destroyed. Even the way paper is made, it is taken from trees, turned into wood pulp, and then pressed and dried. As paper, its form is impermanent and yet fixed, having the infinite capacity to become something new. Shell embodies this, as the living and ever-cyclical nature of paper actualizes the nature of identity. The self is never stagnant, it is to be molded, written on, and hung out to dry.
Tori Ellison, Shell, 2010, Paper, Wire, and Acrylic, app. 5.5 x 45 x 2 in.
A dress is expected to form one’s body. We expect it to highlight the best and hide the worst. However, Ellison calls to honoring the uncomfortable places not explored. In connecting body, mind, and identity, she asks us to reevaluate the ways we view ourselves in the idealist of shapes. Perhaps we can all learn to wear Ellison’s Shell, to make it a home, to remodel it, and eventually outgrow it.
Tori Ellison’s work is included in We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16 to December 7, 2024. For more information on Tori Ellison, visit https://www.toriellison.com/. For more information on We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.
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.
We Live in the Sky from October 16th to December 7th, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James
Although the towering and intricate silk screens hanging from the ceiling may be what first catches the eye of students and visitors passing by the Stamp Gallery’s windows, upon entrance to the space, they are enrobed in the profound themes of the exhibition constructed by multidisciplinary artists Mami Takahashi and Tori Ellison entitled We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity. The artists chose to start the show with three framed screenprints, which contain a direct connection to the greater University of Maryland community, and encapsulate the sometimes fleeting memories we associate with our character and home.
Tori Ellison, We Live in the Sky (1), 2024, screenprint, framed 19 x 25 in.
The triad of silk screens, which bear the same name as the exhibition, get the viewer thinking about the overarching themes early on, and how they may relate to their existences. At the very bottom of the label, a short line of text explains that the phrases stenciled on the aviary background were written by University of Maryland creative writers and other members of the community who were prompted to write freely about what home meant to them during a workshop Ellison held at the Old Parish House. By collaborating with students to create the pieces, Ellison allowed the exhibit to reflect the student population and their ideas around identity, home, and belonging – showing how contemporary art can extend outside its often enclosing shell, and become an opportunity for acute conversation between neighbors.
Tori Ellison, We Live in the Sky (2), 2024, screenprint, framed 19 x 25 in.
Hearing from students both native to the United States and international, most of whom had never lived away from their home and family before college, creates momentum for dialogue, especially in an exhibition focused on the idea of home. Each of the three pieces incorporates a unique set of phrases, that offers a unique perspective from a student’s life without adding personal details such as name, age, or even major- removing the chance for bias.
The writings are not structured, with very little punctuation. The lines run together in a motion comparable to a stream, with a constant flow of consciousness being fed into its confluence. The writers give concepts without adding details, allowing the viewer to visualize the lines in relation to their own lives. This effusion mirrors the concepts behind the main symbol of the exhibition, which can be seen in the backdrop of the expressions: the swift, a bird that “lives aloft for years, drinking raindrops, sleeping on the wing, soaring 30,000 miles through clouds before landing back in its nest.” This motif, which appears throughout the show, adds another layer to the site specificity of the show.
Tori Ellison, We Live in the Sky (3), 2024, screenprint, framed 19 x 25 in.
College offers a rare opportunity to meet people who have had experiences and perspectives that contradict your own and to understand how aspects such as culture, race, nationality, etc contribute to the former. Although we often cultivate and grow into our own persons in college because of this, and each become individuals separate from our immediate families, they have still irreversibly influenced each one of us and the people we become, which cannot be overlooked. Just as the swift soars thousands of miles away to make discoveries and spread its wings, we branch out to learn and become, never forgetting what made our foundation, and landing back in our metaphorical nests. Although some may not have the chance to physically return to their home due to displacement, family tensions, or other reasons, they will hold it with them forever – it is reflected in every phrase we use, the advice we give, and the gestures we make.
I hope that those who come to visit the gallery will understand the intentions behind these pieces and the message that Ellison and Takahashi have worked faithfully to communicate and that we each may go out into the world able to extend understanding and love to the members of our campus community because for some this is what tethers them to their nest. As one of the lines in We Live in The Sky (3) says, we are always called back- “The god of my roots/ Come back, come home.”
