Between Us • A group exhibition of RISD printmakers • January 12th - February 17th, 2018
The six of us often sit around on three sofas in a shared studio and talk about this and that. In this sofa room there is a gathering and an unraveling. Between us, there is a knot that makes strength, attaching us with a fibrous thread. There is a conjoining of histories in our relationships. Between us, there is also a knot that is untethered, unraveling, releasing the force of a bond that has let go.
A tied knot and a knot untied carry the same ghost of energy transferred. These ghosts are vestiges of past charged in the present, in the smell of tar, in a fabric structure burnt out, in the once liquid surface of concrete and in the final layer of a print. Between us, we sit with the inquietude of our time, of our history, and of our predicated futures. We consent to receive the tension of how to approach hindsight, and how to nurture a collective imagined future.
This exhibit features the work of printmakers Audrey Danze Blood, Camila Escobar, Valeria Rachel Herrera, Anna McNeary, Kelly Taylor Mitchell, and K. Sarrantonio from the graduate program at the Rhode Island School of Design. They have spent the past year and a half working alongside one another, in a collaborative print studio, turning many voices into one and one back into many.
Anna McNeary’s work draws on the familiarity of pattern, decoration and domestic materials. By appropriating motifs, spaces and objects that evoke home, comfort, and structure, she explores the necessity of intimacy and security through the playful, awkward and uncomfortable nuances of cultural and interpersonal connections and relationships. She received her BA from Smith College and is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design.
www.annamcneary.com
Kelly Taylor Mitchell conveys information pertaining to the oral histories of the enslaved during chattel slavery in The United States, specifically related to concepts of land tenure, territorial claims, community autonomy, and inherited identity. Her work takes the form of artist books and installations, employing various printmaking processes such as letterpress, lithography, and screenprinting. She received her BFA from Tufts University/The School of the Museum of Fine Arts and is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at The Rhode Island School of Design.
www.kellytaylormitchellstudio.com
Valeria Rachel Herrera’s practice combines a conceptual interest in architectural space, place and time - both imagined and real - that records superimposed conditions of memory through tactics of abstraction. Her oeuvre builds a multi-layered narrative from a personal biography where select fragments are distinct and magnified, while others fall into obscurity, chaos and disjunction leaving the viewer in a state of instability - challenging one’s ability to comfortably navigate the work. Valeria received her Bachelor of Architecture professional degree from the Syracuse University School of Architecture and is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design.
www.vrachelherrera.com
Camila Escobar received her BFA in Fine Arts and BA in Art History from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and is an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work explores the patriarchal impact of Catholicism on family structures from a personal, nuanced and complex perspective, specifically addressing pressure on Colombian women throughout history and in the present moment. Camila has exhibited work in China, Portugal, Colombia and the United States.
www.mcamilaescobar.com
Audrey Danze Blood’s work addresses how the past is constantly reintegrating itself in the present, being interpreted and reintroduced in our social histories, in the Anthropocene, and in our personal histories of repeated experiences of emotion in the mundane and everyday. A sheet of cast concrete surface is an origin point for our residual landscape memory. This is a landscape of ghosts, of ordinary affect, when a momentary charge brings the past and the present briefly into alignment in material surface, and gets stuck in that moment in time. Audrey received her BA from Bowdoin College and is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design.
www.audreydanzeblood.com
K. Sarrantonio’s silkscreen prints use imagery of fabric and knotting to reference abstract bodies and explore collective tensions and anxieties of queer existence. K. has been a member of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Studio, The Lower East Side Printshop and The Printmaking Center or New Jersey. They studied printmaking at SUNY New Paltz, Mount Holyoke College and UMASS Amherst, received their undergraduate degree in Visual Art from Hampshire College, and is an MFA candidate at the Rhode Island School of Design.
www.ksarrantonio.com
Photographs by Christopher Ferguson
A tied knot and a knot untied carry the same ghost of energy transferred. These ghosts are vestiges of past charged in the present, in the smell of tar, in a fabric structure burnt out, in the once liquid surface of concrete and in the final layer of a print. Between us, we sit with the inquietude of our time, of our history, and of our predicated futures. We consent to receive the tension of how to approach hindsight, and how to nurture a collective imagined future.
This exhibit features the work of printmakers Audrey Danze Blood, Camila Escobar, Valeria Rachel Herrera, Anna McNeary, Kelly Taylor Mitchell, and K. Sarrantonio from the graduate program at the Rhode Island School of Design. They have spent the past year and a half working alongside one another, in a collaborative print studio, turning many voices into one and one back into many.
Anna McNeary’s work draws on the familiarity of pattern, decoration and domestic materials. By appropriating motifs, spaces and objects that evoke home, comfort, and structure, she explores the necessity of intimacy and security through the playful, awkward and uncomfortable nuances of cultural and interpersonal connections and relationships. She received her BA from Smith College and is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design.
www.annamcneary.com
Kelly Taylor Mitchell conveys information pertaining to the oral histories of the enslaved during chattel slavery in The United States, specifically related to concepts of land tenure, territorial claims, community autonomy, and inherited identity. Her work takes the form of artist books and installations, employing various printmaking processes such as letterpress, lithography, and screenprinting. She received her BFA from Tufts University/The School of the Museum of Fine Arts and is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at The Rhode Island School of Design.
www.kellytaylormitchellstudio.com
Valeria Rachel Herrera’s practice combines a conceptual interest in architectural space, place and time - both imagined and real - that records superimposed conditions of memory through tactics of abstraction. Her oeuvre builds a multi-layered narrative from a personal biography where select fragments are distinct and magnified, while others fall into obscurity, chaos and disjunction leaving the viewer in a state of instability - challenging one’s ability to comfortably navigate the work. Valeria received her Bachelor of Architecture professional degree from the Syracuse University School of Architecture and is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design.
www.vrachelherrera.com
Camila Escobar received her BFA in Fine Arts and BA in Art History from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and is an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work explores the patriarchal impact of Catholicism on family structures from a personal, nuanced and complex perspective, specifically addressing pressure on Colombian women throughout history and in the present moment. Camila has exhibited work in China, Portugal, Colombia and the United States.
www.mcamilaescobar.com
Audrey Danze Blood’s work addresses how the past is constantly reintegrating itself in the present, being interpreted and reintroduced in our social histories, in the Anthropocene, and in our personal histories of repeated experiences of emotion in the mundane and everyday. A sheet of cast concrete surface is an origin point for our residual landscape memory. This is a landscape of ghosts, of ordinary affect, when a momentary charge brings the past and the present briefly into alignment in material surface, and gets stuck in that moment in time. Audrey received her BA from Bowdoin College and is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design.
www.audreydanzeblood.com
K. Sarrantonio’s silkscreen prints use imagery of fabric and knotting to reference abstract bodies and explore collective tensions and anxieties of queer existence. K. has been a member of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Studio, The Lower East Side Printshop and The Printmaking Center or New Jersey. They studied printmaking at SUNY New Paltz, Mount Holyoke College and UMASS Amherst, received their undergraduate degree in Visual Art from Hampshire College, and is an MFA candidate at the Rhode Island School of Design.
www.ksarrantonio.com
Photographs by Christopher Ferguson