MAY 2022
:)…and back to home
hey folks,
it has felt really nice to be back home after six months traveling last year, ritualizing breakfast, and walking/thinking each morning while completing research on a few new projects that i’m really proud of.
a friend had sent me a copy of Kathy Acker’s “Against Ordinary Language: the Language of the Body” where she talked about a contrast between a language with our physical selves or essence and a language of meaning. after talking to my friend about Hospes (my new stop mo film), we discussed the difference between being a body (the potential of our bodies to be read as political symbols especially queer folx of color) and having a body (being so aware of our physical presence during a pandemic). for obvious reasons, we are all acutely aware of the limitations of physical self, thinking about breath and touch in limited quantity…while the protests and many conversations that have followed about equity highlight just how much my identity communicates through subtext before i have a chance to speak.
over the past year, i’ve been most drawn to work that requires care. i have been thinking about care as an accumulation of small intimate gestures. in my work the slowness of a stitch against stitch or walking to and from the camera to pose a stop mo puppet working frame by frame, create form from these accumulated moments.
i’m happy to say that i’ve finally finished my stop motion:
working with such wonderful folks: Andrew Paul Keiper (sound design), Glen Smakula (rig frabrication), and Jeffrey Chance (color), the generous folks from Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Film and Media Studies at John Hopkins University, and the Art Department at Williams College through the Levitt Artist-in-Residence (w/ special thanks to Amy Podmore and Laylah Ali for their mentorship and conversation).
…also this past summer i spent 2 months at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY where i worked on the expectation of the observed, a spinning (pictured above in a still state) collection of hand sewn silver lycra formed disco meat. i had many meaningful conversations there, helped a friend fly a 10’ triangular hand made solar balloon from a canoe and befriended many a groundhog.
i’m looking forward to completing some new work this summer, talking a lot over good food, fixing up some home projects that i’ve been putting off for too long and getting lost with cheech during a long road trip somewhere interesting. stay well and hope to bump into you soon. w/ love -s
other stuff from this year: (forthcoming) Stone Quarry Art Park, Cazenovia, NY new piece for a exhibition about body and landscape…more soon…
Sweaty Eyeballs, Behind the Screen, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD
Featuring: Adam Davies with Leili Tavallaei & Nick McKernan Albert Birney Cassie Shao Christopher Rutledge Corrie Francis Parks Eric Dyer Erinn Hagerty & Adam Savje Evan Tedlock Gina Kamentsky Ismael Sanz-Pena Jim Doran John C. Kelley Karen Yasinsky Lynn Tomlinson Ru Kuwahata & Max Porter Stephanie Williams Tynesha Foreman Zoe Friedman
Curated by Phil Davis with Alex Ebstein
Goucher College is pleased to present Sweaty Eyeballs Animation – Behind the Screens in Silber Gallery, on view from February 11 through March 27, 2022. Behind the Screens presents animation highlights from the Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival, exhibited alongside additional artworks and process ephemera that provide a window into each of the artists’ unique approach to the medium. The animations range from documentary and narrative to the visually abstract. They span digital and analog, with examples of stop motion, rotoscoping, hand-painted, hand-drawn, clay, collage, puppetry, and zoetrope animation. Founded by Phil Davis in 2012 as a series of one-night-only events, Sweaty Eyeballs has been a consistent platform for and champion of animation in the Mid-Atlantic region. In 2019, Sweaty Eyeballs became a full-scale animation festival, hosted at the Parkway Theater.
In this gallery exhibition, artists who’ve participated in various iterations of Sweaty Eyeballs spill beyond the monitors to reveal their frame sequences and material experimentations. Others present drawings, collages, sculpture, filmstrips, and their preparatory notes. Behind the Screens celebrates the extensive work that makes up and supports animation in a survey of style and format.
PlainSight, WDC
additional installation sites this week at the EU Ambassador’s Residence and EU Delegation, WDC for PassportDC
A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art
Featured Artists: Hoesy Corona, Alanna Reeves, Mike Thron, Michal Gavish, Julie Wills, MK Bailey, Antonio McAfee, Emily Fussner, Stephanie Williams, Lionel Frazier White III, and Sobia Ahmad.
Featured Writers: Lukas Jüliger, Roser Capdevila, Bernardo P. Carvalho, Julia Fiedorczuk, Axel Lindén, Drago Jančar, Marek Šindelka, Tiziano Fratus, Michael Roher, Ann De Bode, and Laurie Agusti About A Window to Europe Plain Sight DC and the EU National Institutes of Culture in Washington, DC (EUNIC) are proud to present A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art, a series of short exhibitions featuring eleven visual artists from the Washington, DC region who will create work in response to eleven books by European writers, as part of the 2021 Europe Readr project. Featured artists are Hoesy Corona, Alanna Reeves, Mike Thron, Michal Gavish, Julie Wills, MK Bailey, Antonio McAfee, Emily Fussner, Stephanie Williams, Lionel Frazier White III, and Sobia Ahmad. This exhibition series is presented in partnership with the EUNIC Global and the Delegation of the European Union to the United States.
The Europe Readr is a curated set of European literature brought together under the concept of “The Future of Living” to present a variety of perspectives that contribute to the debate on the future of Europe and to put an emphasis on the importance of culture as a driving force of international integration and sustainable development.
Featured exhibiting artists’ works will explore themes ranging from vulnerability, the natural world, identity, competing human economic and ecological needs, nostalgia, and the limitations of our physical bodies.
news/interviews/talks: National Museum of Women in the Arts Blog, January 27, 2022
Goucher College, Art Department, Baltimore, MD
SMFA Tufts, Drawing for Sculpture class
MICA, Around Flat Painting class & FYE Drawing class
Williams College, Faculty Colloquium
support
2021 DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Fellowship Grant, WDC
residencies
(postponed from 2020) 2022, Resident Fellow, The Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY
other stuff
i’ve been very proud to be on the very active board of Reston gallery, Tephra ICA, drafting new language and institutional commitments while maintaining support for the artists that we show.
