Tag Archives: mixed media

Artist Interviews, Current Exhibition

Interview With ‘Open Ended Narratives:’ Artist Schroeder Cherry 

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 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.

Current Exhibition

Wearing Interiors and Exteriors: Tori Ellison’s Shell

​​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.

Current Exhibition, Uncategorized

What happens to hidden tears? 

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Placeholder from October 10 to December 9, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Reshma Jasmin

In the past few years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to cry.

“Men don’t cry” is society’s mantra for masculinity. Emotions are seen as weakness, and men are meant to be strong, so crying, which is an overflow of emotions, is emasculating. Even though I was not socialized as a man, I still learned that tears equal weakness when I was pretty young, and I was quick to internalize it. Starting when I was seven or eight, I would hide whenever I was upset— in various closets, under my bed, under desks, in between and behind furniture. My tears were meant to be hidden too, but I was never allowed to remain hidden, and neither were my tears as my brother and parents would immediately search and pull me away from my too fleeting enclosed sanctuary.

After a traumatic experience at age nine or ten, I was more adamant about hiding. I still cried, but my sobs were suppressed, so I never made a sound. I would hold shut the doors of the various closets when someone found me. In my arguments with my family, or when feeling overwhelmed in some way, tears would well up in my eyes, but I never let them fall in front of people. When I was eleven, I learned that what I’d gone through was traumatic, and until I was seventeen, I didn’t cry at all. My eyes only ever welled up because of seasonal allergies.

When I first walked through Placeholder, I saw some of my struggle reflected back at me in the pieces by artist James Williams II. 

Williams is an American artist based in Baltimore, MD whose work focuses on aspects of racial constructs, systemic racism, and cultural identity. In his artist statement, he explains that his work is meant “to challenge the ambiguity of the Black construct as both an object and personhood.” His pieces in Placeholder explore the hidden nature of identity and emotion in the Black experience. Williams explains that his work as an artist and professor is inspired by his older daughter’s questions about race. He tries to simplify the Black construct because even with all the complexity ingrained in race in America, he believes “it’s not as complex as we make it.” (from the artist’s website). He embodies “a childlike understanding” of experiences and perceptions of Blackness in America by using a blend of multiple mediums.

In the artists panel during the opening reception of Placeholder, he recounts the moment his daughter said, “I don’t see you cry.” Williams responded that he has cried, especially thinking back to his experiences as a young Black boy in upstate New York, but his daughter’s observation appears to have stuck with him.

James Williams II, This Ski Mask is for Hiding Tears, (2023), Velcro, yarn, oil paint on canvas and panel

The socialized stigma of crying and vulnerability is especially prevalent in Black communities. Due to systemic and societal/cultural racism in America, Black people are forced to be resilient just by existing. In an effort to maintain the image of being strong and avoid losing resolve, Black people are socialized to suppress their emotions and hide their tears. The title This Ski Mask is for Hiding Tears suggests that the ski mask is a refuge from being seen in weakness. The identity of the wearer is obscured, since they are not seen as an individual but as a “Black person”— a generalized entity that embodies all the stereotypes of Blackness. A ski mask is also a symbol of the racist perception of Black people as criminals. The ski mask objectifies its wearer by stripping personhood and replacing it with a criminal status. Ultimately, the tears are the only things that are visible above the mask, but they still go unseen because people do not sympathize with perceived criminals.

James Williams II, Calm Before, (2019), Velcro, oil paint on canvas and panel

When reading the title Calm Before, our minds automatically add in “the storm” to finish the phrase. The phrase refers to the quiet period before disaster strikes, and explains the anxiety that comes when things are too quiet or go too smoothly. Pressure builds when confined, so the “calm before” is really the roller coaster going up its first hill— the higher it goes, the more intense the drop.

The title Calm Before suggests a work that would depict that foreboding period of stillness when the storm clouds are forming. But the piece depicts a chaotic storm with teardrop rain falling from an angry cloud in a dark woods. The drops are different colors, sizes, and mediums— oil paint on canvas, paint on panel, or velcro. Unlike the more common titles that summarize the content of a piece, Calm Before is like the title of a poem that also serves as the first line. The title is followed by the piece, which illustrates “the storm.” This also captures that the calm before and the storm after are the same— the chaos and pain just move from internal to external. Or there is no storm at all, and it stays confined in the calm before, tears that build up never fall, and the pressure builds with no release. Either interpretation simplifies the building emotions that Black Americans carry throughout their entire “calm” or “normal” lives due to the nature of racism in America.

I encountered my own storm when I was seventeen. The bottle holding everything I refused to feel or confront for years exploded, and I sobbed unceasingly— still silent, but uncontrollable. Unfortunately, I quickly returned to a state of calmness where my tears would at least well up with emotion, but I could never find release by crying, even when I was alone. 

Williams’s work does not resonate with me in the same way it would for a Black viewer. He captures the complexities of handling and expressing emotions that Black people encounter due to the societal realities of racism and racial constructs in America. The Black experience he illustrates comes from his own lived experience. To me, Williams’s work is heart-wrenching and beautiful. His pieces tell me that tears will stay hidden and the storm will remain trapped in the calm before; that is the natural state of things, as he has experienced. But he shares that pain with the world through his work, so his pain becomes visible. Though it seems somewhat bleak and scary, his vulnerability is his strength. And that makes me want to continue making an effort to cry.

James Williams II’s works are included in Placeholder at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 10 to December 9, 2023.

For more information on James Williams II, visit https://www.jameswilliamsii.com/.

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

Current Exhibition

The Hijab Untitled and Unfolded: A Dual Symbol of Empowerment and Oppression

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UNFOLD from January 30 to April 1, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Reshma Jasmin

According to the curatorial statement for the Stamp Gallery’s current exhibition,  UNFOLD, the artwork on view explores the function of clothing to “mediate connections between public and private, human and non-human, self and other” in a way that “[complicates] these binaries.” This power of clothing is readily apparent in the work of Hoesy Corona, Elliot Doughtie, and HH Hiaasen. These three artists use modified clothing or sculptures of clothing as a medium to comment on prevalent issues, social phenomena, and injustice; their work is a clear “unfolding” of clothes. 

But UNFOLD houses another artist’s work: Untitled (۱۴۰۱ Series) by Mojdeh Rezaeipour. Rezaeipour’s work differs from the work of the other artists in the exhibit as her individual pyrographic collages on wood contain no textile work or sculpture of textile. The series of panels is titled ۱۴۰۱, or “1401,” which likely stands for the year 2022 according to the Persian calendar. This is likely because the content of her work focuses on the protests in Iran which began in 2022.

In Iran, the government requires that women cover their hair with a hijab. In September, a young Kurdish woman named Jina (Mahsa) Amini was murdered by Iranian police for failing to comply with this gendered law. In response, a series of feminist protests were mobilized by Iranian women in and outside of Iran. Four out of eight of Rezaeipour’s pieces on display at the Stamp Gallery involve women holding their fists up. The raised fist is used in a lot of movements and protests, notably in Black Lives Matter and Black Power movements, but also historically in socialist, feminist, anti-fascist, etc. demonstrations and protests. The nineteenth-century French artist Honoré Daumier shows a man with a raised fist in the c. 1848 painting The Insurrection, which is commonly thought of as the first documented depiction of the raised fist as a symbol of resistance and rebellion. The icon of a raised fist represents resistance, solidarity, and power— all aspects of the ongoing protests in Iran that Rezaeipour highlights in her series.

 
Mojdeh Rezaeipour, Untitled (۱۴۰۱ Series), 2022-23
 

In conversation, Rezaeipour pointed out the context of the scenes in some of her pieces. What I thought were pretty shades of blue and yellow that made the black and white grainy image of a woman rock-climbing stand out was actually a poignant moment of civil disobedience. In October, Elnaz Rekabi represented Iran in a climbing competition without her hijab, breaking Iran’s strict law. According to IranWire, Rekabi’s brother was held hostage by the Iranian government, so she was forced to apologize for her lack of hijab during her climb, and afterwards her family home was destroyed.

Rezaeipour moved on to describe the significance of the hijab as a dual symbol of freedom and oppression. In one of the two pieces below, Rezaeipour depicts two women, one with a chador (full-body and head covering garments) and one with uncovered hair and three-quarter sleeves, holding their enjoined hands up in front of the Iranian flag (left). Rezaeipour asserts that there is solidarity between women, that feminism is the empowerment of the choice to wear a hijab or not, and that the protests in Iran were a demonstration of said solidarity. In the other panel on the right, a woman with uncovered hair stands with a hijab in her hands in front of the historic Azadi Tower, also known as the Freedom Tower, which is located in Tehran, Iran. When the woman raises the currently controversial piece of clothing to the Freedom Tower, she is actively taking her right to choose; the tower in the background stands as evidence that as an Iranian, regardless of law, it is fundamentally her freedom to choose what to do with her hijab.

Mojdeh Rezaeipour, Untitled (۱۴۰۱ Series), 2022-23
Mojdeh Rezaeipour, Untitled (۱۴۰۱ Series), 2022-23

Rezaeipour focuses on a piece of clothing that traditionally speaks to faithfulness of women. When clothing, something so close to the body, holds such spiritual significance, it becomes sacred. As a sacred cloth that speaks to the wearer’s personal experience of faith, modern Muslim women wear the hijab to feel empowered by their religion. When covering of hair is made mandatory, the hijab is weaponized to oppress women, an act that is even sacrilegious by virtue of disrupting a woman’s choice to express her faith freely and sincerely. In Rezaeipour’s Untitled (۱۴۰۱ Series), it is seared into wood that when it is a free choice, the sanctity of the hijab remains intact.