Distinct Chatterfrom April 18 to May 20, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Marjorie Justine Antonio
In the last few weeks of the Spring 2022 semester, Stamp Gallery visitors can interact with Richardson-Deppe’s soft sculptures, Two Pants (2022) and Six Pants (2022), by tucking themselves into the supple and seemingly infinite loop of fabric. Tangled together, the visitor and the sculpture become one, blurring the line of where the person begins and the pants sculpture ends. Here, Richardson-Deppe allows the casual gallery visitor to be intimately acquainted with her work, both literally and metaphorically.
Charlotte Richardson-Deppe, Two Pants Portraits, 2022. Print on archival paper, 18” x 14”.
Richardson-Deppe’s work dynamically entangles fabric, fiber, and other textiles with themes of queerness, pain, love, loss, rest, desire, entanglement, memorial, and persona. Richardson-Deppe’s describes her work as “embodied autotheory” and writes that she is “preoccupied with the way that memories, relationships, and emotions are embedded in the cloth and clothing that humans surround ourselves with.”
Richardson-Deppe self-identifies as a queer feminist textile artist. A few of her exhibiting works speak directly to her identity and relationships, from her embroidered fabric work, Pillowcase (2021), and video performance Bodyknots (2022) with Mary Kate Ford.
Charlotte Richardson-Deppe, Pillowcase, 2021. Cloth, thread, 32” x 16”.
Pillowcase (2021) is the first mounted work visitors see when they enter the gallery. The mauve pillow case is punctured by red thread, and its accompanying placard transcribes the embroidered text, reading:
This pillowcase is for my lover’s pillow she will rest her cheek on these words she will sleep here and dream here I made this out of my love for her. This pillowcase will be cherished like my grandmother’s quilt which also lies on this bed, like the shirt I now wear that my aunt sewed for her brother, my father. Only the handmade receives this level of care, of protection, of desire. It is tailored solely for its intended purpose: it is singular and specific and made for Gabby for their extra long pillow that I stole from them each night when we first started dating, for this pillow that now lives on our bed that we share, on Gabby’s side of the bed, where we rest our heads, sleep, dream, whisper, cry, collapse, and sing.
Charlotte Richardson-Deppe
Here, Richardson-Deppe’s work immortalizes the connection between material objects and her significant others. Richardson-Deppe describes how her affection for her lover, Gabby, will be inscribed into the pillowcase, which will be cherished as the other clothing and material objects given to her by her family. The narration takes the reader through an intimate history: from the artists’ queer relationship and the future they dream up together. Through the patient process of embroidering letter by letter, memory and human relationships are tied to this intimate act of care.
Another example of queer intimacies is Bodyknots (2022), a performance video by Charlotte Richardson-Deppe and dancer Mary Kate Ford.
The video depicts two femme-presenting people entangled in thick, red soft rope interacting in a field of grass shrouded by thick clouds. This piece highlights the dynamic between two individuals who seemingly are unable to escape each other as they are bounded by a tangible thread. One pulls on the rope and the other attempts to escape until they both tumble to the ground together. In the grass, they both rest after a contentious struggle against each other, and share an affectionate cuddle, before helping each other rise again.
Stills from: Charlotte Richardson-Deppe and Mary Kate Ford, Bodyknots, 2022. Video, 7 minutes.Stills from: Charlotte Richardson-Deppe and Mary Kate Ford, Bodyknots, 2022. Video, 7 minutes.
Bodyknots shows the struggles of a relationship, whether that be the reckoning of one’s body and self, or between a loved one or partner. The red rope that connects the two performers together is symbolic of a key theme in the artist’s work:
“At its core, my work is about interdependence: I explore the joints and disjoints intrinsic to relying, depending, and caring for oneself and others in the world.”
Charlotte Richardson-Deppe
Charlotte Richardson-Deppe shines in the University of Maryland, 2nd year MFA in Studio Art group exhibition, Distinct Chatter, through her tactile soft sculptures, narrative descriptions of visible mending and darning, and queer intimacy through both thread and video. Her work entices the casual visitor to take a seat, get comfy, and ponder what it means to be comfortable in one’s own body and clothing.
See more from Charlotte Richardson-Deppe in “Distinct Chatter” — The STAMP Gallery’s current exhibition featuring three 2nd year MFA students, Mercedes, Hosna Shahramipoor, and Charlotte Richardson-Deppe, and is open until May 20, 2022.
Additionally, Charlotte Richardson-Deppe will be hosting a Visible Mending Workshop on Wednesday, May 11, 6:30-8:30 pm, co-hosted by Studio A and Stamp Gallery.
alternate universes: visualizing queer futurisms from February 10 to April 6, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella M. Chilcoat
“Curves are natural, neutral in nature the same way they are on the body,”
according to one captivated and insightful gallery visitor speaking on Camila Tapia-Guilliams’s panel painting, The Muses.
Last Tuesday, I led a tour through the Stamp Gallery’s exhibition alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms, which will be on view until April 6. I relate to the viewer’s fascination as I ponder the sloping red outlines of nude human forms that sweep in circular progression over the organic grain of an untreated wood board. The repeated subject exists in absolute harmony with the medium as complimentary topographic strokes in cobalt, evergreen, and burnt umber caress the two natural entities — the painted and the painted-on. Initially created as a segment for their final portfolio before earning a degree in studio art from the University of Maryland, Guilliams describes The Muses as a manifestation of their own identity exploration as a non-binary person. The Muses considers the history of the exploitation of women for the inspiration and progression of male success, the objectification of the female-presenting nude, and the male gaze in works of art and other representations of women. All of the abuses of both form and person perpetuate an inhospitable climate in art spaces around the globe toward any person or persons presenting visible signs of difference from the longstanding status quo centering predominantly white cis-gendered men’s work. Tying seamlessly into some of the exhibition’s main points of discourse, The Muses points to this ostracization as it extends beyond the gallery walls, festering in the woven fibers of society.
Detail, The Muses
The panel’s dimensions of 24 x 48” translates roughly to a sideways movie poster. To behold this work in person, however, will initiate a deeper, tumultuous effect on the senses — the eye devours the information on the wall while plunged into summits then chasms of visual form and carried into an awareness of the self, the artist’s humble request for empathy. Studying the faces reveals subtle expressions that only suggest which emotions could fill the empty spaces between the red outlines constituting their bodies. Human curves echo natural wood grain as if to parallel the carbon impermanence of them both.
Finally, when the eye latches onto the last red of the right-most body that bends its head at an acute degree toward the left, the passageways of line carry the viewer back to the beginning to repeat the infinite process of discovery. To intone the conversation with my tour member once again, I consider how the world (or the universe) would look in the absence of bodily objectification, of gendered conventions sustained at the detriment of equity. What iterations of the future can exist from these histories?
Camila Tapia-Guilliams’s work is included in alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from February 10 – April 6, 2022.
Camila Tapia Guilliams will be joining two other artists in the Art of Community Care: Collaging Collective Action hybrid event in StudioA and zoom on March 16, 2022 at 6:00PM.
alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms from February 10, 2022 to April 6, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Marjorie Justine Antonio
Sirens, newsreels, and the impending war, Static sparks with the brush of our hands, Messages in my palm. And I swipe, scrolling furiously; Fuel on empty. A deep breath. A whirl, a spin, a spiral, Close one eye, then another. A deep breath. Pull yourself up, Open one eye, then another. Gaze upon this place, Not new, not mine, A world not too different from the last, But where we can find What we need To survive.
– The Preface, Marjorie Justine Antonio
alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms offers a look into how artists and creatives re/imagine history by shifting perspectives from mainstream narratives, responding to historical and contemporary issues, and engaging in the practice of world-making. This exhibition is rooted in the frameworks of futurist thought and aesthetics, from Afro-Futurism, Latinx futurism, Indigenous Futurism, Chicanxfuturism, and Techno-Orientalism, and explores futurism’s intersection with queerness. Here, queer futurisms are shaped by cross-cultural articulations of humanity met with burgeoning technology. Our queer future is a deep mediation of the past to inform the present and shape our future, or what some might call a practice of decolonization. Scholar José Esteban Muñoz describes queer futurity as a “structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present…queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world.”
Conceptually, alternate universe draws from other exhibitions that also explore queer futurity. This show was heavily inspired by Thea Quiray Tagle’s curatorial work with AFTER LIFE (what remains)at the Alice Gallery in Seattle, WA, and AFTER LIFE (we survive) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA, and UCR ARTS at the University of California, Riverside’s traveling exhibition Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas. These exhibitions were integral to how I understood queer futurity in the contemporary art world, both aesthetically and thematically. Moreover, these shows exposed me to artists new and old who have responded to the call of imagining queer futures, para sa akin, para atin, para sa lahat. And with that, I cannot claim that the themes in this show are novel or particularly innovative, but are rather an extension and a continuing conversation of what is already here and what is to come.
alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms places themes of speculative futures, queerness, gender, and survival in conversation with our current world. A juxtaposition of different mediums and focuses, from augmented reality artwork, game design and trans of color theory, to mixed-media and cooperative and anti-capitalist work, alternate universe ultimately engages in the questions:
What are the responses to the current state of our universe, our Earth, our world as queer/queered people? And how do we create and build alternate universes to survive?
Theme #1 – Queer futurity: aesthetics and content in the past, present, and future.
Queer futurity is present in this show not just in the aesthetic nature of new and immersive media, in which where art meets technology, but in the theoretical roots in indigenous sovereignty and anti-capitalism. The works of Camila Tapia-Guilliams and micha cárdenas meet for the first time in this exhibition. Their meeting is not a tiptoe around strangers, nor a barrage of content or wild-flung ideas, but a complementary union in a shared space.
Camila Tapia-Guilliams. All On Borrowed Time, 2021. 9 x 16.5”, acrylic, ink, collage on paper.
Tapia-Guilliams’ All on Borrowed Time (2021) is displayed a few steps away from cárdenas’ Redshift and Portalmetal (2014). Tapia-Guilliams’ work is energized by the multi-coloured lines in the background, reminiscent of Washington, D.C.’s metro lines, overlaid with ominous figures of a hand, heart, and the seeing eye, paralleled by what can be described as mountainous ranges on the top and bottom of the piece. Ambiguous shapes float in between the wavy words, leaving their meaning up for interpretation to the viewer. Here, what is to be grounded is hovering above, reflecting upon the topsy-turvy nature of time itself, where nothing is concrete or given.
cárdenas’ Redshift and Portalmetal is also dynamic in its format as an online game, and in its display on two computers in the rear section of the gallery, with one screen projecting onto the wall. Here, gallery visitors are able to recline onto the leather arm chairs to read and click through cárdenas’ poetic storytelling to be immersed into a world where climate change necessitates traveling outside of the known planet to a new land. Redshift and Portalmetal offers a lens to understand the experience of migration and settlement for a trans woman of color through the story of Roja, whose planet’s environment is failing. cárdenas’ Redshift and Portalmetal gives agency to the viewer, who must choose to survive or to perish, to leave or stay, and what it means to settle in a new world.
Together, Tapia-Guilliams and cárdenas’ pieces speak of the detrimental effects of climate change and the experiences of queer/queered people as they navigate through the present and future of our “new normal.”
“The only way to save our future and give us hope is to organize together around networks of care and resistance to the oppressive structures holding us to our current unsustainable timeline. Time is ticking; we need not turn back but learn from our past and look forward.”
Camila Tapia-Guilliams
Theme #2 – Worldmaking as a practice of community care and survival.
In alternate universes, characters typically find doppelgangers, deviations in time streams, the outcomes of the “what-ifs,” and more. While some alternate universes can be complicated in their mind-boggling physics, others are set in worlds where characters who passed in another universe are now alive, those who were struggling are now happy and fulfilled, outside of tragic plotlines of the fictional canons. Yet, alternate universes are not always completely different from their original worlds: they draw from what is already here.
In this exhibition, alternate universes are collaboratively constructed, from the Critical Realities Studio’s Sin Sol (2020), an augmented reality video game, to Camila Tapia-Guilliams’ mixed media collage series comprised of I Think We Should Change (2021), Take Me Back to Release Me Forward, Open My Eyes So I May Shut Them in Rest (2021), andThere Lies My Tired Eyes, May They Rest in Peace. The Smoke Has Clouded Them, Without Air I Cannot Breathe. The Fire Comes Out My Mouth. (2022).
Critical Realities Studio. Sin Sol / No Sun. Augmented Reality Video Game, 2020. http://www.sinsol.co/
Sin Sol by micha cárdenas, in collaboration with Marcelo Viana Neto, Abraham Avnisan, Kara Stone, Morgan Thomas, Dorothy Santos, Wynne Greenwood, Adrian Phillips, allows users to experience climate change-induced wildfires from a trans Latinx AI hologram named Aura and their dog, Roja. Within the gallery, folks are able to engage with Sin Sol through playing on the iPad app, or viewing the gameplay video. In either instance, Aura speaks to the viewer from fifty years in the future and narrates the effects of environmental collapse.
Collage series by Camila Tapia-Guilliams (left to right): Take Me Back to Release Me Forward, Open My Eyes So I May Shut Them in Rest (2021), 12 x 18”, acrylic, ink, collage on board; There Lies My Tired Eyes, May They Rest in Peace. The Smoke Has Clouded Them, Without Air I Cannot Breathe. The Fire Comes Out My Mouth (2022), 12 x 18”, acrylic, ink, collage on board; I Think We Should Change (2021), 12 x 18”, acrylic, ink, collage on board. Close Up: Camila Tapia-Guilliams. Take Me Back to Release Me Forward, Open My Eyes So I May Shut Them in Rest (2021).
Camila Tapia-Guilliams’ mixed media collage series honors their queer ancestors; acknowledges burnout and the pressures of capitalism on disabled people, LGBTQ+, women, people of color, and the working class; and calls to action what we should change in order to create better futures. Here, the past, present, and future are placed in conversation to see where we have been, where we are, and where we can go forward.
Theme #3 – The power of the word: affirmations, remediations, and articulations that hold us all together.
Throughout this exhibition, the power of words holds Tapia-Guilliams and micha cárdenas together. Both artists embed their own poetry and writing into their visual art practice, from cárdenas’ narration styles in both Redshift & Portalmetal and Sin Sol, to Tapia-Guilliams’ incorporation of poetry into the mixed media elements and within the artist wall labels themselves. cárdenas’ words are deep meditations on surviving climate change disasters, echoing throughout the gallery from the video installation, and then displayed throughout Redshift and Portalmetal. Here, cárdenas draws from the poetry of Black and Latinx feminists whose actions and words have enabled communities to survive.
Similarly, Tapia-Guilliams’ community-centered practice is evident through their incorporation of various theoretical models and inspirations right into their artist statements. With Exposure (2019-2020), Tapia-Guilliams references the work of Martha Fineman to expand upon vulnerability theory, and for There Lies My Tired Eyes, May They Rest in Peace. The Smoke Has Clouded Them, Without Air I Cannot Breathe. The Fire Comes Out My Mouth, Tapia-Guilliams refers viewers who are interested in rest as resistance to Tricia Hersey’s The Nap Ministry. Tapia-Guilliams offers further resources and reading with an invitation to the viewer to also meditate on their own understandings of queerness and queer futurity. Throughout this show, the viewer can clearly hear, read, and see articulations of queer futurity.
Curator’s Reflection
As a student docent for the last four years at the STAMP Gallery, I have had a distinct pleasure to curate this exhibition for a space that I know so intimately. It was a long and arduous process but ultimately seeing how viewers engage with the show in all of its elements has brought me so much joy during 2022’s hardest-hitting moments.
alternate universe has transformed the blank walls of the gallery into a canvas for new media and mixed media art, projection spaces for cárdenas’ augmented reality video game and web-based game, a venue for Tapia-Guilliams’ “Art for Community Care: Collaging Collective Action” event, and a reading nook for visitors to engage with the pop-up library. Furthermore, it holds the potentiality of queer joy at its core.
alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms has cárdenas’ and Tapia-Guilliams’ words embedded in every corner, colorful projections and collages brightening the white gallery walls, space for students and community members alike to engage with queer dreams of the future, and a call to action for where we can go from here.
This exhibition and programming is supported by the Immersive Media Design Program (imd.umd.edu), The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (wgss.umd.edu), University Libraries (lib.umd.edu), STAMP Events (stamp.umd.edu), and the Maryland State Arts Council (msac.org).
For more information on alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms, visitThe STAMP Gallery.
Yams, tomatoes, Potatoes & Plums from October 25, 2021 to December 11, 2021 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat
While the Yams, Tomatoes, Potatoes, & Plums exhibition in the STAMP Gallery is visually exquisite and captivating, we ought to understand why and how this “genre” arose and the deeper effects of colonization and appropriation. The long history of Australia finds frequent neglect in the American education system, limiting our public’s broader acumen of Australian culture generally, but especially of the communities native to the territory. Because of such limited familiarity, it is easy for our American brains to consume the current works on display only for their “pretty colors” while forgoing a comprehensive appreciation for the artists or the sordid history they endured all to eventually gain notoriety in the mainstream art scene. I should adjust — a mainstream art scene that has traditionally rejected or degraded not just female artists and artists of color, but has also abused indigenous artists by appropriating their culture or denying the artists the credit they are due based on a lack of “formal training” or societal ignorance. It is, therefore, critical that we, as the public encountering Indigenous Australian art, inform ourselves and learn how to interpret works outside of our conventional artistic canon.
Bessie Petyarre, Bush Plum, 2021, Acrylic. 123 x 115 cm. | Naata Nungurrayi, Marrapinti, 2001, Acrylic. 46 x 91 cm
The most helpful place to start is researching directly from the source. Our exhibit features an informative primary source video interview in the first gallery niche on our right side wall with one of the artists, Esther Bruno Nangala. She explains her work, Bush Tomato, its symbols, and, briefly, customs of harvesting and processing of bush tomatoes in her community. She details the importance of the harvest for women with their parts in planting, collecting, and then processing the tomato by grinding it into a paste and rolling the paste into balls for children to eat. Here, we can gather an easily accessible contextual basis for at least one painting in the collection.
Observer, viewing Esther Bruno Nangala’s interview featured in the STAMP Gallery
Moving into some of the broader history of Australian history of Indigenous peoples and Western colonization of the land, the beginnings of colonial activity arose in the late 16th Century. On January 26, 1788 British Captain, Arthur Phillip, landed in Australia simultaneously marking the land’s first foreign settlement and the commencement of an enduring brutal campaign over indigenous peoples and their land for Britain’s territorial growth. The years to follow obliterated native populations through the devastation and dispossession of lands, introduction of diseases, and direct violence. Today only 3.3% of Indigenous people remain in the Australian population.
Some of the greatest problems arise in describing Indigenous artworks when art critics, collectors, curators, and large museums neglect the historical context and fail to attribute the same credit to Indigenous and self-taught artists as “classically trained” Western artists. Certain terminology repeatedly arises in the Western media that degrades the credibility of othered artists (“other “ being non-white, non-Western) — negatively connotated descriptors include words like “untrained,” “primitive,” “tribal,” “primal,” “untainted,” or “pure,” etc. Such a phenomenon arises when people hold the context of the works over the physical form. For instance, when looking at a piece by Leonardo daVinci, arguably the most famous name in Western “classical” art, most people of the general public understand him as a “master” and, accordingly, ascribe importance to his works based on his known history alone – just from seeing his name with a painting. This is not to say that da Vinci’s works are not technically impressive, but there is an automatic, or implicit, bias connected with how much the general public already understands about him.
it is pivotal that we can appreciate their context while analyzing the formal elements by their own merit.
So, when we look at the acrylic paintings on display in the Yams, Tomatoes, Potatoes & Plums exhibit, it is pivotal that we can appreciate their context while analyzing the formal elements by their own merit. Furthermore, the approach to examining the form of an Indigenous artwork or one by a self taught artist – without implicit bias – is to completely abandon anything we know contextually and to compare on the same pedestal the work to any other similar pieces that it inspires. Here, we ensure that the artist receives all the credit she deserves, fairly. That is not to contradict the first half of this essay by any means, though. We need to employ the context to understand or empathize with the work’s meaning, but not when analyzing formal elements against a different work or while forming an initial impression.
Naata Nungurrayi, Bessie Petyarre, and Esther Bruno Nangala’s work is included in Yams, Tomatoes, Potatoes, & Plums at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 25, 2021 to December 11, 2021.
For more information on Yams, Tomatoes, Potatoes & Plums and related events, visit The STAMP Gallery.
New Arrivals 2021 from August 30 to October 16, 2021 at the STAMP Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | written by Isabella Chilcoat
Faith Couch, a young and electrifying contemporary photographer, breaks through walls of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality through her pure, intimate, and unapologetic images. Graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2019, Couch has already exhibited across the globe in the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Queen’s University Belfast, Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie, and International Center of Photography to name a few, and has earned a spot on the Forbes 30 under 30 for Art and Style. She currently works out of Baltimore, MD and continues to gain notoriety throughout the world for her sensitive and provocative photographs.
Remarkably, two of her works, selected by University of Maryland’s CAPP committee for the University’s permanent collection, currently hang in the STAMP Gallery inspiring feelings of reverence, awe, and intrigue. Fitting seamlessly into this year’s CAPP committee’s mission, the members note that both selected works inspire internal and interpersonal discussion into the complexities and dynamisms of the Black experience.
“The intangible aspect of Memory is concretized in a visceral sense via the body but is triggered by an object, image, sound, or gesture”
Couch, Faith. “Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other.” Faith Couch, 2020, https://www.faithcouch.com/black-love-is-political#1. Accessed 17 September 2021.
One of her pieces adorning the walls in the STAMP Gallery exhibit is Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other, 2021, Archival Inkjet Print, 24” x 36” that has sparked incredible conversation within the gallery in only its first month on display. The luminous photo print describes a scene of Faith, herself, and her partner nude in a vast grass field as they rest intertwined with loving gazes over each other’s bodies as if to absorb every moment in the presence of the person they love. The composition betrays the immaculate skill of the artist and tantalizes the eye of the viewer with its soft diagonals of limbs and torsos, while employing a fascinating one point perspective from the impressions of cut grass opening toward the couple who reclines in the central foreground and basks in golden sunlight.
Delving more deeply into Couch’s exquisite technique, the image contains shadows on the bottom corners taking the form of a subtle vignette, and, as the viewer draws nearer the picture, they become a part of the vignette that distances them from the scene. Here, the artist establishes privacy and safe distance for her figures so that they remain undisturbed, but, equally, to enforce that the viewers may only experience this moment vicariously by removing room to objectify her subject’s bodies. The serenity and intimacy is preserved forever.
Couch has commented “The intangible aspect of Memory is concretized in a visceral sense via the body but is triggered by an object, image, sound, or gesture.” Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other captures the history and folklore, indispensable to Black culture and invokes the internal landscape of both dark and joyous memories through the image of Black people expressing tenderness, love, and intimacy. She composed a highly personal image that speaks especially to members of the diaspora to establish connectivity and community in shared happiness and pain. Ultimately, via Then I Remembered the Most Radical Thing Black People Can Do – Continue to Love Each Other, Faith Couch asserts that the greatest statement against injustice and disharmony is love.
P.S. I HIGHLY encourage you to check out all of Faith Couch’s works on display in person for the full viewing experience (socially distant of course) as well as her instagram for exclusive content and even more shots of her work and artistic process
Faith Couch’s work is included in New Arrivals 2021 at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 30 – October 16, 2021. Couch will be joining the other artists of New Arrivals 2021 in an artist talk in the Gallery in October 2021.
So you’re walking by the Stamp Gallery one afternoon. Peaking through the glass exterior, you see that there are boxes and packing paper scattered throughout. You see some power tools on the benches, and a ladder leaning against the corner. You notice random walls that seem to be hanging out in limbo in the middle of the space. Walking past the entrance, you find a sign taped to the door: “Closed for installation, please come back for our opening next week!”
Ever wanted to know just what goes into the installation of a gallery exhibition?
The past week at the Stamp Gallery has been quite a busy one, with the installation of our current exhibition featuring new arrivals for the Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP). As a docent, I get to take part in this installation process. As such, I thought I’d offer a little glimpse into a few of the more subtle, never-occurred-to-me-before-I-started-working-here types of things that go on behind the scenes of an installation.
Vinyl
When you first walk into the Stamp Gallery and start reading about what the exhibit is about, you are reading the vinyl. I’d like to start off by admitting that, before I started working at the gallery, I was under the impression that someone had to come and actually hand-paint the words onto the wall…which I’m glad is not the case! After the exhibition overview is typed up in a Word doc, it is sent to be blown up in size and then printed out on a kind of sticker-like paper. Before sticking this onto the wall, we measure the length/width of the sheet, take a ruler to the wall, level it, and make light pencil marks for guidelines. Next, we peel off the outer layer of the sheet, which uncovers the sticky part that goes onto the wall. Once we have the sheet up on the wall, we smooth out any wrinkles and press it against the wall as much as possible – this makes it easier to peel the paper off without peeling the actual letters off as well. The final step is to do the actual peeling!
Walls
In the gallery, we have“moveable” walls that are stored in the back. The wall holding Titus Kaphar’s The Jerome Project (Asphalt and Chalk) XII is a moveable wall.
These walls allow us the mobility to create new, smaller spaces within our existing gallery space. They also provide extra surface area to accommodate more pieces, draw attention to particular works, as well as provide general interest and variability to the eye. For this exhibition in particular, we added a wall behind the podium holding Wafaa Bilal’s Perseus Beheading Medusa and Pink David in order to direct focus onto the pieces, since they are relatively small objects in comparison to the space.
Lighting
Tracks along the ceiling of the gallery provide grooves that the lights hook into. There are three tracks spanning the length of the space, and five tracks running widthwise. The lights themselves consist of a bulb attached to a frame that can be maneuvered to adjust the angle of the light accordingly. In addition, there are metal bars within the hook of the frame that conduct electricity and make the light turn on when attached to the track. Depending on the needs of the exhibition/pieces, the lights can be placed so that they either “spotlight” or provide a softer, glow to the work. When spotlighting, the lights are generally placed closer to the piece, which provides a very direct focus. Setting the light farther back creates more of an atmosphere and harmonization for the piece as well as the space surrounding it. Other things to keep in mind when setting up lights is reflection, shadows, and the color casted by the bulb. For the pieces that contain a glass covering, we had to consider the effects of possible reflections caused by our lighting choices. In addition, we can control the degree and location of shadows by light placement. For Ellington Robinson’s Oath of the Imperialists, we played around with the distance of the lights from the work in order to “shift” the shadows around.
Finally, some bulbs are older than others and cast a softer, more yellow hue than the newer ones, which typically cast a very bright, verging on greenish tint. We usually try to match the shades of light throughout the exhibit.
Of course, there are many other aspects that go into a gallery installation that I haven’t mentioned here – each show is unique in terms of the methods used to bring it together. For a closer look at the results of our installation, be sure to check out the opening reception of CAPP New Arrivals 2015 this Friday, September 25th between 6-10pm.
One of my absolute favorite pastimes is people-watching. That may sound creepy; yet, it’s something that never becomes boring, since no two people will look or act exactly the same. When I people-watch, I feel as if I’m a receiver of information rather than a creator. To put it simply, I enjoy people-watching because it can be an entertaining, passive kind of activity.
At the same time, there have been days when I chose to add a new aspect to my people-watching game. I was recently sitting on a bench at Dupont Circle in D.C. with a friend, and we decided to pick a passerby at random and “invent” a life for him or her. It’s astonishing when I think about the number of attributions we were able to come up with, based exclusively on our first impression of this stranger.
Since “Looking Black At Me” has been in show, I’ve been thinking about the difference between simply observing a person versus actively making assumptions about them. I think that there is a very fine line separating the two things, and this line falls in different places for different people. In my own experiences, I’ve found that it’s sometimes hard to even be aware of crossing the line. It just seems to be a natural human inclination to attach a personality and a characterization to an unknown face.
When I stand in front of the monitors in the gallery and (seemingly) make eye contact with the people in the video, I challenge myself to ignore the impulse to characterize them right off the bat. I particularly like the notion that the person in the screen is essentially looking right back at the viewer, but without making any sort of judgment. It really gets me thinking about the give-and-return that comes with making judgments.
Even when I feel positive that I’m not characterizing someone on first sight, it sometimes happens subconsciously. I think this is why it’s so easy to develop an impression of someone and then stick with it. Something that I’ve taken away from Larry Cook’s work is the idea that perception can be considered fluid. Larry’s exhibit has reminded me that our immediate characterization of someone isn’t set in stone by any means. When visitors come to this show, I like to think that they walk away with the awareness that perception is changeable.
The current exhibit at the gallery showcases handmade tissue paper made by the very talented Maya Freelon Asante. Noted as the first person to make art such as this, she uses special paper and dyes to make her tissue paper. She uses the result materials to make grand statement pieces. The gallery is doing something new called AIR or Artist in Residence. The goal was to make art something hands-on and more accessible to the people who visit the gallery. Freelon Asante brought her tissue paper to the gallery and is allowing people to come in and either contribute to a quilt that will fill the length of the gallery, or to add to spiral designs called Peace by Piece
Naturally, I was really interested in the concept of Freelon Asante’s vision for her exhibit in the gallery. Her exhibit is titled Volume; she is emphasizing the importance of the space between the community that is helping with her art and herself as the artist. Almost as if the large scale quilt being made by the community is slowly filling that volume between them and her.
I expected visitors to also be excited in participating in the art and making whatever they want with such interesting material. What I didn’t expect was seeing community form in front of my eyes so organically. I have had people come in who maybe keep to themselves and mediate while adding to the piece, but what has struck me is the conversations I’ve been able to have with visitors that I haven’t had before.
One visitor and I talked about the career fair, his major, and what he wants to do with his life. Another visitor and I talked about the profound nature of secrets, and how she likes to incorporate creativity in her own home using chalkboards and games.
I have not been able to have these same connections with other exhibits we have had at the gallery. People would often quietly come in, look around, and leave at their own pace. Here and there I would have a brave soul who would talk to me about gender during Queer Objectivity, but other than that this is a brand new experience to me as a gallery worker.
I always like to tell people that art always has a purpose, whether its obvious or not to the viewer, there is always something. With this art, I thought I knew the message behind it, but slowly it has revealed to me it’s true purpose: bringing together people that normally would never have the opportunity.
Credit to one of my great co-workers (sorry I don’t know who exactly took this-whoops)
Ashlyn
A Contemporary Art Dedicated Space at the University of Maryland
