Tag Archives: UMD

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.

Uncategorized

“Orientation”: Meaning in Memory and the Immediate Surrounding

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

Imagine extracting two decades of your life from your memory into a set of photographs. What would remain? A few clear shots of joy or pain, emptiness or vague fragments? Years reduced to colors and shapes, objects, repetitive paths? Fleeting moments preserved, while others slip through entirely?

Jeffrey Hampshire’s Orientation, from the ‘This is a Long Exposure’ exhibition at STAMP Gallery, asks how do we carry memory, from the past and present, and still moments through time? How do we remember the places we pass through every day on our walk back and forth from work to home, and what do those visuals say about our relationships with our natural surroundings, space, ourselves, and our story?

Orientation is an evocative visual journal created from the artist Jeffrey’s own daily journey from home to work, college, still moments captured in between, caught by the attention of the eye. In the series of small photographs lined up in rows, some moments are subconsciously registered by being on a repetitive path, others a new experience releasing dopamine while some a connection to the past. Each photograph documents a pause—a glance, a texture, a corner of his workspace, a moment of peace and silence in nature, or a still object of the world that caught his attention. And yet, as a whole, the series of photographs refuses to be purely documentary, placed in a jumbled manner with no direct connection to a timeline. These are not moments captured for the sake of memory, echoes of one’s values and perception of the immediate surroundings, residues and questions. Jeffrey arranges the photographs intuitively, allowing opaque and transparent layers, visual disruptions, and blank spaces to guide our experience through the installation.

These photographs reflect the unnoticed, and noticed in our lives: the cluttered stairwells, the roads and signage, the plain sky silently watching over, the voice echoing through the pipes, wires and roads, the trees seen at a quick glance, a delay to work by the fallen tree. And yet, through repetition and scale, these “insignificant” still moments become portals to the viewer’s perception. As you view these photographs you ponder upon moments that don’t register at first but linger in the subconscious.

Orientation, by Jeffrey Hamphire, 2025. Inkjet print, transparency film, projection.

In an age where headphones filter out atmospheric sound and our commutes blur into our subconscious memory, Orientation is an alternative: a meditation on the act of seeing, seeing differently, seeing through time and space, seeing in different dimensions. It asks us how we interact with natural and man-made environments, how we disregard, how we dismiss—and how even forgotten, unnoticed visuals may hold space and meaning, appearing on our memory board.

Some images seem wiped out of existence, while others faded and abstract—reflecting the way memory functions. Do we really recall that morning sky, or just the feeling of having been late? Do we remember the street corner, or only the stress tied to it? Do we remember the conversation we had on the side of the road, or was it a made up memory, a moment from the past perhaps? We walk the same paths each day, yet something always changes. Do we even realise this, the weather, our thoughts, a detour from a construction zone we didn’t expect. The duality captured through the tension between routine and change makes the viewer wonder, and look more closely.

Standing in front of this piece, I found myself thinking, I believe I have some similar images stored in my photographic memory. Who else has walked this road? Do our memories overlap and what are they thinking as they walk through it? It is a strange thought perhaps, but strangely comforting to know how connected we are with others in the environment around us, if only to pause and pay more attention.

In Orientation, the artist Jeffrey Hampshire gives a layered, intuitive, form to that memory and invites us to reconsider the invisible architecture of our lives. To listen, to see, and maybe to remember with a renewed perspective.

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

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, Uncategorized

The Sweetness of Liberation: Reclamation of the Watermelon as a Symbol of Autonomy in Schroeder Cherry’s Open Ended Narratives


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. 

Current Exhibition

Framing the Narrative: Access, Memory, and Identity in Schroeder Cherry’s Art

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.

Current Exhibition

Shelter and Language in Tori Ellison’s Sky Writing

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. 

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 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. 

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

Window to Earth

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

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

Tori Ellison, Windows in the Sky (2024)

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

Tori Ellison, Sky Writing (2024)

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