Wilson Commons

In betweenness

Artists: Tasia Shen

Dates: April 17 2023 - April 28 2023

• Artist Statement

  Tasia Shen’s work navigates a path through the ideologies collectivism and individualism, and how these philosophies shape perceptions of ourselves and understanding of society. Shen draws inspiration from being brought up in a shared culture and relocating to places encouraging individuality. Rather than rejecting or embracing one modality over the other, they do not consider the cultures to be diametrically opposed. Shen addresses personal stories by imposing their marks by embellishing the material and incorporating the hand elements such as sewing, dying, and printing.

  The exhibition In Betweenness is where Shen examines their experience and wonder between the two cultures. They notice themselves often switching personas while in different environments and want to know the reason behind it. In the project dinner time, through the window, and to kiss a pillow goodbye, Shen uses mass-produced materials such as curtains, tablecloths, and pillow cases, translating and interpreting objects we already know in a new way.

  Crawling is constructed with numerous small pieces of wood charcoal at the bottom and a few large pieces hanging from the ceiling. Each piece of wood is a symbol of individuality as well as an exposure of the imbalance of social hierarchy. Whether in nature or culture, the effects of individualism and collectivism are inescapable, but Shen chooses to engage with their materials with a new awareness of their place in both.

Recapturing Nostalgia

Artists: Sarah Woodams

Dates: April 17 2023 - April 28 2023

• Artist Statement

  Sarah Woodams is a photographer and graphic designer based in Rochester, New York. She attends the University of Rochester, majoring in Studio Arts and Environmental Studies as well as minoring in Digital Media Studies, and Sustainability. She is also a Take Five Scholar studying Gendery, Sexuality and Society and will graduate in May 2024.With an academic background in the environment and a passion for the outdoors, Woodams focuses primarily on landscape photography and utilizes her graphic design skills through her marketing job with Facilities Team Green at the University. Her work has been featured in group shows in the Hartnett Gallery and AS/IS in Sage Art Center.

  Sarah Woodams’ work explores her relationship with the world around her through digital photography and graphic design. She spent her childhood exploring Rochester’s many greenspaces with her family, leading to a great appreciation of the outdoors. With a major in Environmental Studies and a longtime passion for history and the natural environment, Woodams focuses primarily on landscape photography and capturing unique perspectives. Her graphic design work takes a more informational approach, creating brochures, park posters, and incorporating text into photographs and collages. Both aspects of her practice allow Woodams to return to what she grew up with and gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of her home in Greater Rochester.

  Recapturing Nostalgia features landscape photographs of locations along the Erie Canal, a place closely tied to her childhood spent outdoors with her family, and a booklet featuring writings connected to each spot. Woodams uses a drone to capture previously unseen points of view, inaccessible with her camera on the ground. These new angles reveal shapes within the landscapes, heavily influencing her image composition and revealing that art is everywhere when you start looking for it. The booklet contextualizes the photos for the viewer, allowing them to better understand Woodams’ childhood connections and hopefully think back to their own memories.

More Beautiful Than It Was

Artists: Brooke Fiannaca

Dates: April 17 2023 - April 28 2023

• Artist Statement

  Born in Haddonfield New Jersey, Brooke Fiannaca is a visual artist and currently a senior student double-majoring in Studio Arts and Economics at the University of Rochester. Fiannaca has participated in numerous large-scale mural projects throughout her artistic career, most notably in the United Service Organizations (USO) center in the Philadelphia airport. Her work has been shown in ASIS and Frontispace galleries at the University of Rochester, along with the Markheim Arts Center in New Jersey.

  Memories shift and evolve over time, but do we have agency over what they become? Visual artist Brooke Fiannaca explores this question in her two dimensional work. She believes that experiences can be transformed into parables, elevated beyond what they were. Her practice draws upon her own memories. The process of remembering, interpreting, and producing imagery for these moments allows for a narrative to emerge. Fiannaca uses these stories to learn from her own past. An important part of living is to elevate your own experiences, to find meaning in your mistakes and grow from it. More Beautiful Than it Was is the product of that belief.

  Fiannaca uses goua                                      che, graphite, and acrylic in her practice. She uses these mediums to embellish moments from her life. Her style draws upon a flat storybook aesthetic to establish these memories as chapters in a bigger narrative. This includes her summer spent away from home, trying to keep her houseplant alive. Another work elaborates upon a lost necklace, and an unusual injury. This show incorporates how her memory from a family trip has evolved, and also the reflective nature of a sketchbook practice. A common theme is the balance between a picturesque moment and the reality of what happened, which she explores in her final work. These pieces come together to create the cohesive narrative of More Beautiful Than it Was.

Pulling on Strings

Artists: Emma Bentley

Dates: April 17 2023 - April 28 2023

• Artist Statement

  Emma Bentley is a multidisciplinary artist whose primary focus lies in prints and textiles. The many transitions she has experienced in her life, from her time living in Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina, Alaska, and Oregon, have shaped her art practice. She is currently a senior student at the University of Rochester, where she is pursuing both a B.S. in General Biology and a B.A. in Studio Arts. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Frontispace Gallery and ASIS Gallery at the University of Rochester.
  Emma Bentley struggles to identify as an artist. Her academic pursuits have driven her in various directions. As a results-oriented individual, she pursues experiences outside of the studio with a specific outcome in mind. In her practice, Bentley uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine her process of making art. By concentrating on the art of creation rather than the result, she is able to be present in the moment and immersed in her thoughts, something she has not found in other areas of her life. This is what gravitates her toward making art. Bentley’s works rely on materiality, frequently incorporating personal symbols and consistently invites the viewer to explore their pieces under their own interpretation.
  Pulling on Strings is motivated by Bentley’s desire to maintain control and follows her development of learning to relinquish oneself to uncertainty. Growing up as a part of a military family, she constantly moved around and had little autonomy in future transitions. She is exhausted by the overwhelming feeling of constantly needing to be in control. To reduce cognitive dissonance, she takes action to lessen the magnitude of her incessant need for order. By concentrating on the act of making rather than the end-product lends itself in Bentley’s practice of disengaging from being in a position of control. The use of strings is labor intensive and requires Bentley to focus on the process in which she surrenders oversight into the results. The various printmaking techniques Bentley uses provides her with different degrees of authority over the resulting prints. With CMYK printing, the process is highly regulated and produces identical prints which allows her to have power over the final prints. In contrast, collagraph prints are profoundly variable which provides Bentley with less regulation over the resulting print. These mixed-media works embody Bentley's introspective reflection through embedded personal information and scale. This new approach to minimize authority over the results documents her progress made in renouncing control over the outcome, both artistically and personally.

respons

Artists: Various Artists

Dates: March 31 2023 - April 14 2023

Going Upstate

Dates: March 15 - 25, 2023:

In/Traction

Artists: Trey Duvall

Dates: February 2 - February 25, 2023

• Artist Statement

  IN/TRACTION continues Trey Duvall’s examination into underlying absurdities of doing and non-doing. The exhibition features a single, gallery wide kinetic work from the IN/TRACTION series that will unfold over the four week exhibition period. This durational installation will be running continuously and in sustained tension, with each movement or action isolated in time by the extraordinarily slow speed of the installation. Work in the exhibition is simply ongoing, with the effects of the gesture residing in expectation, projection, or anticipation of motion. Duvall’s practice is driven by a desire to examine our relationship with agency, futility, and absurdity. The situations, objects, and gestures presented by his practice facilitate an uneasy and ongoing negotiation between concepts of actualization or achievement and the disconnects in our collective desire to create permanence. Trey Duvall received his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Houston in 2017 and currently lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Duvall’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions including RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Denver CO, The University of Wyoming Art Museum, Rice University, Houston, TX, Triumph Gallery, Chicago, IL, Galerie des Beaux-Artes de Nantes, Nantes, France, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. His work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Southwest Contemporary Art Magazine, The Denver Post, ABC News, the Houston Chronicle, and Art In America.

Luminescence

Artists: UR Photo Club

Dates: January 12 - January 27, 2023

Finding Strangeness

Artists: Scott Espeseth

Dates: October 28 - November 19, 2022

• Artist Statement

  For Espeseth, drawing is about transparency, the most direct route from an idea to the paper. Watercolor pushes back on Espeseth’s obsessive tendencies, requiring Espeseth to make compromises, and not lose the forest for the trees. The drawings are inspired by chance encounters with objects, spaces, or events that trigger moments of clarity, where they suddenly appear to be intensely strange, or intensely beautiful. Espeseth attempts to stage these moments, either on site or in the studio, but inevitably ends up making changes. Through the process of careful setup and sustained looking, measuring, and drawing, Espeseth finds a new clarity in the act of making. The images are animated by a consciousness lurking in the atmosphere, as though the membrane between two worlds has worn thin. Espeseth’s subconscious seems to be trying to tell him something through the choices he makes in the studio, and he watches themes emerge, of memory, loss, change, and the fantastic. Scott Espeseth (b. 1975) earned an MFA in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he worked with storied print artists such as Frances Myers and Warrington Colescott. His work has since evolved to focus mainly on drawing, usually with commonplace media such as graphite pencils and ballpoint pen. His drawings have been described as “clairvoyant,” often depicting familiar spaces charged with a sense of dark presence, or other instances where planes of existence clash: the future sending messages to the past, memory intruding upon the present, or the subconscious bleeding into consciousness. He has exhibited nationally, including solo exhibitions at the James Watrous Gallery of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, and Alcove Gallery in New York, NY, and numerous national and international group shows. Scott has been on the faculty of Beloit College since 2002 teaching all levels of drawing and printmaking.

socio-tecture

Artists: Grace Sachi Troxell

Dates: September 29 - October 22, 2022

• Artist Statement

  Socio-tecture addresses the relationship between building worlds and building selves. It takes a surrealist touch to make sense of our everyday lives - it’s a messy process of trial and error, bricolage, and appropriation. Socio-tecture touches on the labor and craft it takes to build identities which suit ourselves while revealing similar energy to conceive ethical spaces. At the root of the work lies an ongoing inquiry of the problems of individuality as perpetuated through capitalism. By exploring the similarities between ‘selves’ and ‘scapes’ the hope is to reveal the importance of relationships over narratives of autonomy or singularity. Sculptures included in the exhibition are made with this tectonic force in mind - they are collages of both material and genre. These works, whether wall hung or standing, reveal the similarities at the conceptual core of architecture, geologies, objects or culture. With reference to landscape production in art history, as well as ideas from human ecology and geo-humanism, this body of work explores the fraught nature of our everyday lives through the manipulation of construction materials, ceramic sculptures, and images. Owen Marc Laurion grew up in New Hampshire where he developed an early and broad interest in the arts and visual culture. Owen earned his BA from the University of Rochester in Anthropology and Philosophy and later, his MFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. Exhibiting nationally, Owen’s work has also been included in the permanent collection of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. A multi-discipline artist, Owen presented a Co-Lecture at NCECA 2018 titled “Seeking Ethical Craft” and has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, The North Carolina Pottery Center, Starworks and the Iowa Ceramics Center and Glass Studio. Owen and his wife recently moved to Iowa City, IA and in Spring of 2023 Owen will be participating in a short term residency at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT

Potato Seance

Artists: Grace Sachi Troxell

Dates: September 1 - September 24, 2022

• Artist Statement

  Potato Séance is composed of sculptures in various states of growth and decay. Throughout the sculptures in this exhibition, there is a sense of fraught entanglement resulting from unexpected material collisions and collaborations as well as forms morphing into one another and coexisting according to different timescales. The other sculptures play with devices of hybridity through revealing and concealing their interior and exterior materials. These sculptures are robust, but to human scale. They take their form from vessels, but quickly diverge as they are made with steel rod armatures and a skin of clay on top of that. Within the sculptures there are rectangular plinths secretly and not so secretly acting as the physical cores. Fire Baby and Venus Ovulating are the only salt fired sculptures in the group. Similar to a belly button or kiln, Fire Baby is the origin story for the rest of the sculptures. The chartreuse is a mason stain mixed with frit, but the variations come from mica, avocado pits, cabbage, banana peels, one week’s worth of compost, as well as salt forming a bumpy clear “glaze” over the shell. This juxtaposition gestures toward a noncontinuous sense of time, one in which industrial and organic materials are learning to be at peace with each other and rely on one another. Grace Sachi Troxell is a sculptor based in Ithaca and Brooklyn, New York. In her current work she uses clay and found objects to explore entanglements between organic and inorganic materials, form and deformity, and digestion. She received a BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College, a Post-Graduate certificate in painting from the Glasgow School of Art, and her MFA from Cornell University. She has been artist in residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, Sculpture Space, the Studios at MASSMoCa, Woodstock Byrdcliffe, Willapa Bay AiR, The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, Dumfries House, Scotland, and The International Textile Art Symposium, Daugavpils Rothko Center, Latvia. She is a 2022-2023 artist in residence at Sharpe-Walentas in Brooklyn, NY. She teaches at Cornell University and Ithaca College