NATALIE CHEUNG | Interlocutor Magazine

INTERLOCUTOR

Oct 25

The darkroom orchestrations of NATALIE CHEUNG

Visual Artists, Multidisciplinary Artists

Intersections of Light #008, 2022, 30 x 38 in. Color pinhole photograph

Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC, is pleased to announce Made of Light, a solo exhibition of alternative process photography and sculpture by the artist Natalie Cheung. Utilizing time, gesture and much technical expertise, the artist captures lived experience directly onto the surface of her photosensitive paper and microplastic sculptures. Cheung’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Made of Light will be on view through November 12, 2022.

Interview by Interlocutor Magazine

You’re a formally trained photographer but you no longer own a camera. What was the impetus for you to abandon the processing of images shot with a film camera to a state of pure experimentation with the development process itself?

I started to get away from using a camera when the medium of photography was shifting over to full digital. At that point, I was already burned out from toting a camera everywhere, which prevented me from being in the moment—not to mention the weird looks bystanders would give me if I took a picture of a very compelling stain on the ground.

More importantly, I wanted to get away from taking pictures of stuff and instead wished to capture an experience on paper. Using photography to simply document is like saying Harry Potter is just a regular school kid. There has been so much experimentation in photography since the beginning of the medium. I think of photography as solar alchemy.

Untitled 1, 2021, 42 x 85 in. Silver gelatin chemigram on photo paper, (From “Facsimile” series)

In your “Facsimile” series, you play with light intuitively in a free-associative style that results in “riffs” on prior forms, such as the “nautical wash of a Turner landscape to the relaxed staining of Helen Frankenthaler’s abstractions.” What kind of personal parameters (if any) do you set for determining when one of these works is finished and ready to show?

While composition and tonal range are certainly qualities that attract me to a composition, the idea of my “Facsimile” series is that every outcome I make is, was, or will be, a pattern seen somewhere else in the world—whether created unintentionally in nature or created with intent by the human hand, without ever having seen my work. Think infinite monkey theorem: if you give a monkey a typewriter, infinite time, paper, and ink, eventually the monkey will type lines from Shakespeare. So in this regard, every composition that comes out of my process is important to the concept, regardless of the look.

67 Hours, 2018, 42 x 80 in., Cyanotype photogram on paper, (From “Intermediaries” series)

In your “Intermediaries” series, you use “slow-reacting cyanotype to create abstract works that seem to map islands, river deltas, or erosion itself.” This was also the process originally made to use blueprints. What would you say you’re ultimately commenting on with these works in terms of humanity’s long history of trying to control/tame nature?

You can’t control everything, there’s always a give and take in nature. Humans tend to think that they are omnipotent, but there are always unforeseen consequences to what we do. Think about every time we have introduced a foreign species into an ecosystem in order to solve one problem, but in doing so, created an even bigger one. “Intermediaries” simulate the uncertainty of cause and effect. I set up my artwork and let nature take its course in evaporation, and what I am left with is usually very different from what I thought would be the outcome. And that’s the point.

Model Island 7, 2021, 16 x 16 in. Micro nylon fiber, paper, paint & plaster, (From “Reclaim” series)

Your “Reclaim” sculptures are topographic models of islands constructed from nylon flocking. Could you describe what attracted you to this material and why it’s important to the meaning of the pieces that you construct from it?

I have been attracted to this material since I was a child, as many children have. It’s the same material they use for fuzzy stickers. But also being a microplastic, the flocking is an ideal material to use in artwork about climate change. Microplastic wastewater is a huge problem. That stuff ends up in fish and crops and eventually in the food we eat. And microplastics don’t have to start off as micro—larger plastic items get broken down and crushed into microparticles that go everywhere. I created the “Reclaim” sculptures to be seductive eye candy; people are drawn to the bright color and shiny plastic, as we are programmed to be, namely by our need for water, searching out for it by its shiny glimmers in nature. The sculptures speak to the darker side of our nature in hyper-consumerism and what it’s doing to the environment.

07, 2020. Dimensions and medium variable, (From “Rock. Paper. Scissors.” series)

For your “Rock. Paper. Scissors.” series you are influenced by chuāng huā papercuts, made on sheets of printer paper in honor of the Lunar New Year. You place these designs against a darkroom projector, blowing them up to monumental reliefs captured on photographic sheets. What most appeals to you about the process of enlarging these designs and allowing elements of chance to slip through the shapes?

“Rock. Paper. Scissors.” is everything traditional Chinese paper cutting isn’t, and that’s sort of a reflection of myself. I am American Chinese and, as such, there are expectations from both of those cultural sides and I’m just saying: “No thanks, I’ll find my own way.” The scale of the artworks is large, the shapes are imperfectly cut, but of all my work, R.P.S. is the most intentional artwork I make in terms of the outcome. I carefully lay all my cut shapes onto the photographic paper, but what I can’t predict are all the interactions between the shapes once the light hits the paper. So the outcome does hold an element of surprise for me. Chance is a central theme in all of my artwork, but in the case of R.P.S., it helps illustrate the many unexpected things that happen in our life that ultimately shape our identities.

Intersections of Light #060, 2022, 30 x 38 in. Color pinhole photograph

Since digital has almost entirely taken over the realm of photography, do you view process photography art as a way to maintain the craft of darkroom processing while also transporting it into a medium that both makes it into something new and also pays respect to the long history of film photography?

I have a deep love for the photographic medium. It’s a magic medium that allows people like me (who can’t draw to save my life) a place to be artistic. I think a lot about how photography for me is integrating the process of my darkroom techniques with the concept of my art; it’s not simply the method I chose to print art on. These days, if you print a photograph in the darkroom with traditional subject matter you took with a film camera, there is a certain level of romanticism that is attached to the image, simply because it was created with what is now considered a historical process—and that’s what I’m trying to get away from. The first question I would ask when I see straight photographs printed in the darkroom is: “Why is it important that the photograph was printed in the darkroom?” What I’m trying to get at is thinking beyond photography just as medium; I’m trying to capture its physical experience.

Made of Light will be on view through November 12, 2022 at Morton Fine Art

All images courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

Tyler Nesler

Natalie Cheung, Morton Fine Art, Photographers, Photography, Process Photography, Sculpture, Sculptors, Exhibitions, Solo Shows, DC Gallery

NATALIE CHEUNG Interviewed | PetaPixel | Camera-Less Photography

Camera-Less Photographer Creates Beautifully Abstract Cyanotypes

 OCT 25, 2022

 SONYA HARRIS

57 Hours, 2022 (detail). Cyanotype photogram on paper. Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

In a unique blending of mediums, the works of artist Natalie Cheung invite viewers into a myriad of captured ‘experiences through time and movement’ set onto the surface of photosensitive paper and microplastic sculptures.

With pictures reminiscent of Rorschach tests, Cheung’s captivating ‘camera-less’ photo series Made Of Light, leaves onlookers beguiled yet intrigued by the artist’s map-like aesthetics.

Cheung’s work is influenced by the natural world, as well as created by light, duration, and the chemistry of making a photographic print. Made of Light manages to adeptly pay homage while utilizing the cyanotype technique.

“Cyanotype is the earliest form of photography;[…] it’s the same process from which early architectural blueprints were made.” Cheung continues, “One of the bodies of work featured in Made of Light […] is Intermediaries. In Intermediaries, evaporation is my subject. The mappings contemplate the incremental transformations our planet is facing as climate change progresses. It is predicted that warming temperatures around the world will cause coastal areas to become dramatically wetter and inland regions drier. The title of each work indicates the hours in which water took to evaporate completely, and what remains is a blueprint of evaporation. The titles in hours are an homage to the ticking clock (literal and figuratively) we have on our planet to reduce emissions and stave off the point of no return for climate change.” Cheung says, speaking to PetaPixel

Untitled 1, 2021. Silver gelatin chemigram on photo paper. (From the series Facsimile). Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

Cheung hails from a mixed-medium background. At 10 years old, she received an in-box 35mm Minolta film camera from her uncle and fell in love with the discipline then and there. She progressed as an avid film user, favoriting Hasselblad, and Rolleiflex and picking up inspiration from album art from bands such as the Pixies. Particularly, their Doolittle album art.

“The photographs in that album were so textural, rusty, and abandoned. So while other kids in my class were taking pictures of their friends and normal stuff teenagers would take pictures of, I was taking pictures of human teeth in crusty backdrops,” she says.

While studying film photography during the height of the “digital revolution,” and as traditional photography began to gravitate towards pixels, Cheung chose to dabble in the creation of new works in the darkroom without the aid of film images.

Intersections of Light #060, 2022. Color pinhole photograph. Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

“When the digital revolution in the photo world took over a few years into my career, I started to think a lot about the essence of the medium: documenting a moment in time with light. I questioned why darkroom photographic processes were still relevant and how I could continue to use them in a contemporary context without my work looking like it was clinging to antiquated romanticism. This is the central idea behind all my work.” Cheung says.

She stuck with the basics, that being Crynotype, and fully committed to a cameraless approach to her images.

“The inspiration for my cameraless photography has shifted over the years. Everybody of work looks very different from the last; even what the artwork is about changes. But the artwork always remains connected by the importance of the process woven into the concept and by the random element of chance that is involved,” She says.

Intersections of Light #033, 2022. Color pinhole photograph. Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

The conceptualization of her process is almost as abstract as the results of her works. In a controlled environment, Cheung uses slow-reacting cyanotype to yield inky-like images with intriguing shapes, textures, and patterns. While some images resemble a kind of cartography complete with river deltas and signs of erosion, others simply invoke the calm and contemplative, aggressive or panicked ‘mood’ of the artist.

“I think about my process like controlled experiments: there are control elements and there are factors I can play with to create a little chaos. I never know what’s going to happen exactly. Sometimes the artwork is a dud and sometimes it’s wonderful and that is very exciting,” Cheung says.

Silver gelatin chemigram on photo paper. (From the series Facsimile). Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

The artist allows her mixtures to evaporate naturally, a process that mimics while subtly commenting on the steady passing of time and loss of water that defines humanity’s relationship with the climate crisis. The results are a brilliant merging of mediums, artistry, and social commentary.

“I’m always excited to see the outcome of an artwork. My work is not predictable: you can set everything up, but the image could be a dud…and there are a lot of duds. So when one turns out great, it’s magic. The process is so technical and labor-intensive that anything could go wrong during processing, so I feel super protective about the artwork until it’s dried and stored.”

Courtesy Natalie Cheung

‘Cameraless photography’ has afforded Cheung an unconventional yet intriguing kind of set-up and work space,

“I don’t use much equipment at all! I use jumbo darkroom trays, chemicals, light, lots of nitrile gloves, and Ilford paper. I keep tagging Ilford in my Instagram posts but have never gotten a nod. I’m sure they are horrified at what I am doing with their product.”

57 Hours, 2022. Cyanotype photogram on paper. Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

Without the traditional nuances of digital, it’s tempting to view Cheung’s process and setup as a simplistic form of photography, however life in a darkroom consistently has proven challenging at times for the D.C based artist,

“Everything is a challenge! I like to make large artwork and I’m small, so from cutting giant heavy rolls of paper to backbreaking processing & archival washing to figuring out who is going to help me move a 7-foot framed artwork, it’s all challenging in different ways. I use these huge trays in the darkroom and even moving one of those around, I think I did something weird and tweaked my shoulder once. Another time the darkroom suddenly had no water pressure…that was fun, to say the least. At the end of the day, I personally need to make this artwork and it’s well worth all the hurdles…and I move my trays carefully now.”

Feedback for Cheung’s works has both challenged and amused the camera-less photographer,

67 Hours, 2018. Cyanotype photogram on paper. (From the series Intermediaries). Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

“If you’re an artist then you know there’s wildly varying feedback. Of course, I love the complimentary stuff, but I value critical, well-thought-out comments the most. Sometimes the most valuable comments come from the most unlikely people. I also secretly enjoy the weird comments like: “This reminds me of the time I spilled laundry detergent” or “I am confused but interested in this”. It’s like reading internet comments. I know it’s wrong to be so entertained, but I am!

Currently, Cheung is focusing on the Made of Light exhibition at Morton Fine Art, and is busy dreaming of future collaborations with artist Marimekko, or at least “a scientist with a powerful microscope.” In the future, she is staying committed to trying different mediums and assessing the fruits of her labors.

“I recently got into large-scale artworks and I’m kind of in love, so I am going to continue exploring scale. I also started making my reclaim (model islands) sculptures, so I want to see where I can go with those. It baffles even me, how after decades of strictly being a photographer, I just sat down and started carving out a sculpture.”

Intersections of Light #008, 2022. Color pinhole photograph. Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

For more from Cheung, make sure to visit her Website and Instagram

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Image credits: All photographs courtesy Natalie Cheung

Available Artwork by NATALIE CHEUNG

HANNELIE COETZEE | Dark Sky Walk (Part 2)

‘DARK SKY WALK’ (PART 2) – 3 November 2022 Hannelie Coetzee, Fireflies, 2022. Olivedale Corner. Image courtesy of the artist. Artist Hannelie Coetzee and scientist Bernard WT Coetzee invite you on a dark sky walk on Thursday, 3 November 2022, the second to be hosted by NIROX. During the walk, visitors are encouraged to explore our relationship with darkness, reflecting on dark skies, light pollution, our fear of the dark, and how we can reduce skyglow so as not to interfere with nocturnal ecosystems. Writing about the previous dark sky walk on 4 July, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen wrote:“ Winding our way along the bush path at NIROX at sunset allowed us to forget loadshedding and other woes for a while. It was a perfectly still winter evening, the quiet broken by the gurgle of the stream that we crossed several times before we arrived at the eye of the fountain. Leaving the forest we headed west, up the koppie to the plateau where we gathered in a small knot and watched two dozen Cape Vultures take wing from their perches on the giant electricity pylons, marching in an impressive phalanx from north to south. Not fifty metres from where we stood, a small herd of zebra, barely visible in the gathering dark, studied us. The walk, organised by the artist Hannelie Coetzee and the biologist Bernard WT Coetzee, from the University of Pretoria, was a kind of dusk vigil to draw our attention to the significant effects of ‘sky glow’ on night-time pollinators and other insects. We stood for a while in the gathering dark and then headed home. Walking without artificial light over uneven ground, we allowed our anger at Eskom’s mismanagement of the electricity grid to be softened by a newfound awareness that darkness, for some creatures, is the best place to be.”

PROGRAMME FOR THE DARK SKY WALK ON 3 NOVEMBER (5 – 9PM):5:30PM: Arrive at NIROX Sculpture Park’s Gate 3 5:45PM: Welcome with tea and coffee at the Lawn Pavilion. 6:00PM: 6.5 km Walk from the Lawn Pavilion into the reserve at dusk (please bring sturdy walking shoes, warm clothes, a thermos, and a headlamp or torch. The terrain can be tricky in the dark and there is game. It’s also snake season). 7:30PM: Blind Drawing session with the artist 8PM: Wind down with delicious, vegan-friendly summer soup.TICKETS: R450 pp To purchase tickets; click button below:Tickets This includes a 6.5km, informative night hike, led by Hannelie and Bernard, light food (vegan friendly), tea and coffee. All ages are welcome. There are limited tickets available for this event, so please book well in advance. Tickets can be purchased here. If you want to extend your experience and avoid the roads, you can book accommodation at Farmhouse58 for the night of 3 November here.

Available artwork by HANNELIE COETZEE.

AMY MORTON | Morton Fine Art | Voyage Baltimore

LOCAL STORIES OCTOBER 14, 2022

Community Highlights: Meet Amy Morton of Morton Fine Art

LOCAL STORIES

Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Morton.

Hi Amy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I come from a line of (underrecognized) women artists on both sides of my family and felt strongly rooted in a creative life from an early age. I majored in art history at Occidental College in Los Angeles and also studied anthropology and studio art. Although I loved having a studio practice, I felt my greater calling was toward advocacy for original voices and exceptional creations by other artists. I founded Morton Fine Art in 2010 and launched *a pop-up project, Morton Fine Art’s trade name, which was a mobile gallery model. After my debut exhibition in DC, I quickly understood I needed to establish a permanent gallery space, also in 2010, and have been exhibiting national and international artists here ever since.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I don’t think many creative professions have a lasting smooth road, in fact a career in the arts typically ebbs and flows and has patches of uncertainty. As a gallerist, I have had to innovate continuously to ensure my business is thriving and surviving. I have a flexible mindset so when something isn’t working optimally, I am not fearful of switching things up in hopes of opening new paths for success. Many of the struggles include activating a collector base during times of collective uncertainty and fear, whether it be financial market troubles or a global pandemic.

As you know, we’re big fans of Morton Fine Art. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African Diaspora.

Morton Fine Art founded the trademark *a pop-up project in 2010. *a pop-up project is MFA’s mobile gallery component which hosts temporary curated exhibitions nationally.

How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I currently work with 28 global artist-partners from the U.S., Puerto Rico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ethiopia, South African, Kenya, Japan, China, Australia, Germany and Trinidad and Tobago. Many of us have worked together for a decade or more with some new partnerships which were formed during the early days of the pandemic. Feeling connected with so many tremendous artists globally makes for inspiring collaboration, growth and continuous learning. We are grateful to have the support of other artists, collectors and art enthusiasts who value the programming and vision we are putting forward at Morton Fine Art.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mortonfineart.com
• Instagram: @mortonfineart
• Facebook: Morton Fine Art LLC
• Twitter: @mfacurators
• Youtube: Morton Fine Art

Image Credits
Photo credit: Jarrett Hendrix and Morton Fine Art

NATALIE CHEUNG | Art Plugged

Natalie Cheung: Made of Light

Exhibitions

1

Natalie Cheung 57 Hours, 2022 42 x80 in. Cyanotype photogram on paper Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

Natalie Cheung: Made of Light
October 15 to November 12, 2022
Morton Fine Art
52 O St NW #302
Washington, DC 20001
202.628.2787

Made of Light a solo exhibition of alternative process photography and sculpture by the artist Natalie Cheung. Utilizing time, gesture and much technical expertise, the artist captures lived experience directly onto the surface of her photosensitive paper and microplastic sculptures. Cheung’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Made of Light, will be on view from October 15 to November 12, 2022 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).

A formally-trained photographer, D.C.-based artist Natalie Cheung no longer owns a camera. Having studied film photography during the advent of the medium’s “digital revolution,” Cheung’s education was heavily centered on the influences of light, duration and the chemistry of making a photographic print. As traditional photography began to increasingly rely on the pixel, Cheung continued to explore these elements in the darkroom without the aid of film images. What resulted was a microhistory of artistic development, her dive into abstraction mirroring the revolt against mimesis undertaken by painters in the late 19th century – ironically, in response to photography’s initial ascent at that time.Appropriately, then, Cheung’s experimental photography takes on a playful relationship with art history itself. In the artist’s “Facsimile” series, Cheung intuitively plays with light, chemical emulsion and photographic paper to create colors and shapes that pay homage to art history’s previous regimes. From the nautical wash of a Turner landscape to the relaxed staining of Helen Frankenthaler’s abstractions, Cheung’s free-associative style inclusively riffs on prior forms, indebted to her realization that no shape or configuration can ever be truly original.

The humility of homage in Cheung’s work is balanced in turn by her technical mastery; her developmental ingenuity is so acute that she is able to translate impulse, memory and reference onto photosensitive paper with the subtlest of gestures.

Natalie Cheung 01, 2020 Dimensions and medium variable
(From “Rock. Paper. Scissors.” series)
Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

With this process itself having become second nature, Cheung’s predilections as an artist and preoccupations as a citizen are able to make their way transparently into her work. In the artist’s “Intermediaries” series, Cheung uses slow-reacting cyanotype to create abstract works that seem to map islands, river deltas or erosion itself. In a process that can take up to several days, the artist allows her chemistry to evaporate naturally, in a manner indicative of the slow creep of time and loss of water that defines humanity’s relationship with climate catastrophe.

Taking up the same process as was historically used to make blueprints, Cheung’s Intermediary works are like designs for a future of ceded control, capturing the chaos of durations we are not accustomed to monitoring. Concern for the climate also comes out in the artist’s “Reclaim” sculptures – topographic models of islands constructed from nylon flocking, a non-recyclable form of compressed microplastic. Inspired by man-made landmasses such as Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah or even the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Cheung’s works hang in lucite display cases like real estate offerings: a scathing reminder that no man is an island.

Natalie Cheung Model Island 4, 2021 16 x 16 in.
Micro nylon fiber, paper, paint & plaster (From “Reclaim” series)
Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist

Born in Virginia to a first-generation Chinese family, a formative artistic influence for Cheung was her mother’s practice of intricate chuāng huā papercuts, made on sheets of printer paper in honor of the Lunar New Year. Incorporating another form of alternative process photography, Cheung’s “Rock. Paper. Scissors.” series places these designs against a darkroom projector, blowing them up to monumental reliefs captured on photographic sheets.

The resulting works carry the grandiosity and simplicity of Barnett Newman’s abstractions, though they are weighted with the significance of Cheung’s history and heritage. Open to the element of chance as she lets light slip in between the slivers of these shapes, such works are a synthesis of the artist’s great themes: balancing inevitability and accident in a delicate dance.

Available Artwork by NATALIE CHEUNG

©2022 Natalie Cheung

AMBER ROBLES-GORDON | David C. Driskell Center

David C. Driskell Center to Present Community Selector Show Aimed at Helping to Tell the Story of the David C. Driskell Center

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September 06, 2022

The David C. Driskell Center is proud to present its fall 2022 exhibition, Telling Our Story: Community Conversations with Our Artists, on view September 9 through December 2, 2022. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Ms. Tamara Schlossenberg
Title: Collections Manager
Phone: 301-314-2615, Email: tschloss@umd.edu

DAVID C. DRISKELL CENTER TO PRESENT COMMUNITY SELECTOR SHOW AIMED AT
HELPING TO TELL THE STORY OF THE DAVID C. DRISKELL CENTER

COLLEGE PARK, MD. – The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, is proud to present its fall 2022 exhibition, Telling Our Story: Community Conversations with Our Artists; the exhibition is on view at the Driskell Center from September 9 through December 2, 2022. The exhibition is the second in a series focused on telling the story of the David C. Driskell Center. The exhibition is curated by Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, Associate Director of Outreach and Operations at American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, assisted by Tamara Schlossenberg, Collections Manager at the David C. Driskell Center and Professor Curlee R. Holton, Director of the David C. Driskell Center. 

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: Telling Our Story: Community Conversations with Our Artists is a show focused on the art of dialogue—the dialogue between art, artists, and the viewer. The Center invited a group of guest selectors to view the Center’s collection of art online and select five works for possible inclusion in the exhibition. They were then invited to come view the works in person and select two that resonated with them.  In the spirit of David Driskell and his famous letter writing to artists, each selector was asked to write a letter to the artists of their chosen artworks stating why they like the piece, how it captured their interest, and why it is significant to them. They were encouraged to express any historical, personal, or societal significance that led to the selection process. Prof. Curlee Holton remarked: 

When an artist creates a work of art, it reflects their constant dialogue, both internal and external, with their identity and the world they inhabit. By encouraging the audience to explore and develop an interpersonal connection to the work they’re viewing, it allows us to have access to a diverse, multifaceted, and multigenerational perspective while broadening and enhancing the appreciation of the creative genius of the visual arts, especially that of the African American artists.

More than forty works were selected for the exhibition representing the art of thirty-one artists from the David C. Driskell Center’s Permanent Collection. The works are on display along with accompanying letters both handwritten and typed.

The show includes works from the following artists:

Emma Amos (1937-2020)
Phoebe Beasley (b. 1943)
Robert Blackburn (1920-2003)
Lillian Thomas Burwell (b. 1927)
Milton Bowens
Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012)
EKO
Ed Clark (1926-2019)
Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007)
Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. 1939)
Kevin Cole (b. 1960)
Louis Delsarte (1944-2020)
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968)
Herbert Gentry (1919-2003)
Robin Holder (b. 1952)
Manuel Hughes (b. 1938)
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)
Samella Lewis (1923-2022)
Delita Martin (b. 1972)
Arcmanoro Niles (b. 1989)
Mary Lovelace O’Neal (b. 1942)
Gordon Parks (1912-2006)
Jefferson Pinder (b. 1970)
Amber Robles-Gordon (b. 1977)
Alison Saar (b. 1956)
Augusta Savage (1892-1962)
Frank Stewart (b. 1949)
Renee Stout (b. 1958)
Walter H. Williams (1920-1998)
Richard Wyatt (b. 1955)

Twenty guest selectors as well as guest curator Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell each selected one to two works of art to be included in the show. Selectors include: Mr. Steven Bell and Mr. Burdette Brown, Mr. Reginald Brown, Ms. Zoë Charlton, Mr. David Cronrath, Ms. Cheryl Edwards, Mr. Larry Frazier, Mrs. Juanita and Mr. Mel Hardy, Ms. Gia Harewood, Mrs. Juanita and Mr. Neil Hartbarger, Ms. Barbara Luke, Mr. Taras Matla, Ms. Rhonda Matheison, Mr. Rodney Moore, Ms. Erica Bondarev Rapach, Ms. Halima Taha, Mr. Riley Temple, and Dr. Sheila Wright.

An exhibition brochure with a full checklist of the works selected for the show will be available at the gallery.  The show will have an opening reception September 8 at 6PM; the first fully in-person opening since the pandemic closures.

Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell remarked about the show: “Individually, this exhibition demonstrates the power of art to affect one-on-one. But collectively, this exhibition demonstrates the future of the Driskell Center, with new community engagement opportunities and a continued collaborative spirit.”

The exhibition will also feature a special tribute to the late Sam Gilliam (1933-2022) in the recently established David Clyde Driskell Gallery Space. The space will feature artwork and archives by and about Sam Gilliam from the David C. Driskell Center Permanent Collection and David C. Driskell Papers.  

The David C. Driskell Center Gallery is open Mondays-Wednesdays, and selected Saturdays [Sep. 17th, Oct. 22th, and Nov. 19th] 11AM-4PM, and Thursdays 11AM-6PM.

Cover Image: Rest Stop (1979) by Phoebe Beasley, oil on canvas, 23.50 x 47.50 in., © Phoebe Beasley, 2013, Gift from the Sandra and Lloyd Baccus Collection.

KESHA BRUCE | The Washington Post

KESHA BRUCE, Memory of Matala, 2022, 60″x48″, mixed media textile collage work on canvas

Kesha Bruce

Review by Mark Jenkins

September 30, 2022

The title of Kesha Bruce’s show at Morton Fine Art, “Take Me to the Water,” is an homage to Nina Simone’s performance of that gospel song. Bruce identifies with water, “a force that follows its own paths and forms its own shapes,” according to the gallery’s note. Ironically, the collagist-painter lives in one of the nation’s driest states, Arizona, where she is director of artist programs for the state’s arts commission.

Bruce reports that her palette has gotten sunnier since she moved from the Midwest to the Southwest, yet landscape is vestigial in her work. The artist instinctively assembles scraps of wrinkled fabric that are painted — and sometimes overpainted — to craft patchworks that may suggest but never literally depict the natural world.

A leaflike form dominates the top of “La Sirene,” and the mostly green “Like Florida Water” has a cool rainforest vibe. But for every “Memory of Matala,” whose blue blocks above tan ones evoke sky overhead earth, there are several pictures whose intricate, quilt-like compositions appear purely abstract. The real subject of this artwork is transformation: cutting, painting and pasting pieces of secondhand textiles into arrangements that are unexpected and distinctively Bruce’s own.

Available Artwork by KESHA BRUCE

NATHANIEL DONNETT | MCLA Arts & Culture

MCLA Arts & Culture to Showcase To Know a Veil Exhibition

08:51AM / Thursday, October 06, 2022Print Story | Email Story

NORTH ADAMS, MASS. — MCLA Arts & Culture (MAC) will showcase a new solo exhibition at Gallery 51, “To Know A Veil” by Nathaniel Donnett on October 7.  

The opening reception will run from 5 to 7 p.m. and the exhibition will be on display until Jan. 27, 2023.  

To Know A Veil consists of wall works, sculptures, an installation, and sounds that investigate concerns about fragmentation, memory, erasure, the self, and interiority. The exhibition borrows its title from W. E. B. Du Bois’s classic book The Souls of Black Folk. In that work, the Veil signifies racism and the accompanying moral perception of Black America. Donnett also draws on Fred Moten’s notion of enclosure—a psychological entrapment caused by social precarity. In the context of this exhibition, Donnett questions how individuals navigate enclosures that frame groups of people as reductive, noncomplex categories instead of plural, complex beings.

During the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Artist Lab Residency, Donnett invited students from Berkshire County’s Pine Cobble School, Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School, and MCLA to participate in this exhibition. They collaborated on a backpack exchange during which the students were given new backpacks in exchange for their old bags. The students also recorded interviews with Donnett that he then used to create an experimental sound piece. 

To Know A Veil communicates the power of imagination as an intermediary, catalyst, and portal that occupies spaces between being and becoming, continuously challenging modern-day ideologies, which stem from our past and impact our future. There is no definitive beginning or end when imagining possibilities, complex positions, or solutions—only human conditions embedded between moments of learning, reflecting, and doing. 

Donnett is an interdisciplinary cultural practitioner born in Houston, Texas. His practice holds metaphysical and phenomenological spaces that explore space/time, history, notions of being, the in/exterior, and race. Black aesthetic traditions, music, refusal, fractal theory, incompleteness, and sacred geometry are strategies and systems he uses to challenge conventional timeline narratives and Western frameworks.

Donnett fuses immaterial and material worlds to expand the meaning and understanding around sociopolitical concerns and liminal spaces that impact underrepresented people and overlooked conditions. 

Available Artwork by NATHANIEL DONNETT

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY | The Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center | If Not Now? exhibition

Portsmouth, VA The Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center is pleased to present If Not Now? an exhibition that features artwork by eight artists whose work draws attention to destructive environmental impacts dating to the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The work poses the questions: What can be done now; when might the next impact occur and who will take these challenges on? Many artists have collaborated with scientists and environmentalists to seek solutions. Others create work that provides a visual realization of how pollution impacts the air we breathe, the water we drink, the oceans and earth that we harvest, and the land that we live on. Artists are: Kim Abeles (California) a multi-media artist and early pioneer in the environmental art movement who utilizes smog as a printmaking medium; Jean Benvenuto (Portsmouth) focused the subject of her paintings on holding ponds created to contain and clean rainwater from road run-off; Rosemary Feit Covey (Virginia) printmaker and painter use print media to present the intricate web of interconnected root systems; Barbara Hennig-Loomis (Virginia) painter and silver-point artist-focused large-scale drawings on ghost forests, a result of rising sea-levels. Printmaker and book artist Nicole Pietrantoni (Washington State) creates large-scale installations of books that share the impact of melting glaciers.

Rosemary Feit Covey viewing her mixed media and experimental printmaking on canvas, Photo credit- Graham Scott

Multi-media artist and photographer Pam Ponce (Virginia) records the impact that drought had on the Great Dismal Swamp and rising sea levels around Virginia’s barrier islands. John Sabraw, of Ohio, incorporates scientific research into his artwork creating paint from iron oxides that are a remnant of acid run-off from former mining sites, including around the Chesapeake Bay. And, Millicent Young of New York is a sculptor whose work utilizes horsehair that speaks toward the fragility of life itself.

On Saturday, August 13, from 10 a.m. – 2:30 p.m., PACC will offer free programming to coincide with this exhibit. Mr. John Sabraw, an environmental activist and artist, will be conducting a demonstration and illustrated presentation, Anthropotography: Mapping the Impact of Art in the gallery. His works have been in TED, the Smithsonian, New Science, Great Big Stories, Business Insider, and Time. For details visit https://portsmouthartcenter.com/programs.

The exhibition will be on view through Sunday, October 16th, 2022.

Rosemary Feit Covey’s Broken Earth, 48″x60″, mixed media and experimental printmaking on canvas

About the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center

The Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center (PACC), is housed in the historic 1846 Courthouse and is devoted to offering quality educational, cultural, and aesthetic experiences through rotating visual art and cultural exhibits, lectures, classes, and performances. It is located at 400 High Street in Portsmouth, VA. Museum Hours: Wednesday – Saturday: 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., Sunday: 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. First Friday of each month: 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Admission: $3/adults, $2/ages 2 – 17 years; Under 2: Free; Members: Free; AAA, military and senior discounts available. www.portsmouthartcenter.com

Available Artwork by ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY

NATALIE CHEUNG | MADE OF LIGHT | Alternative Process Photography

Natalie Cheung, Intermediaries : 57 Hours, 2022, 42″x80″, cyanotype on paper

Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce Made of Light, a solo exhibition of alternative process photography and sculpture by the artist Natalie Cheung. Utilizing time, gesture and much technical expertise, the artist captures lived experience directly onto the surface of her photosensitive paper and microplastic sculptures. Cheung’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Made of Light will be on view from October 15 to November 12, 2022.

A formally-trained photographer, D.C.-based artist Natalie Cheung no longer owns a camera. Having studied film photography during the advent of the medium’s “digital revolution,” Cheung’s education was heavily centered on the influences of light, duration and the chemistry of making a photographic print. As traditional photography began to increasingly rely on the pixel, Cheung continued to explore these elements in the darkroom without the aid of film images. What resulted was a microhistory of artistic development, her dive into abstraction mirroring the revolt against mimesis undertaken by painters in the late 19th century – ironically, in response to photography’s initial ascent at that time.

 

Natalie Cheung, Facsimile : Untitled 4, 2021, 42″x84″, silver gelatin chemigram on photo paper

Appropriately, then, Cheung’s experimental photography takes on a playful relationship with art history itself. In the artist’s “Facsimile” series, Cheung intuitively plays with light, chemical emulsion and photographic paper to create colors and shapes that pay homage to art history’s previous regimes. From the nautical wash of a Turner landscape to the relaxed staining of Helen Frankenthaler’s abstractions, Cheung’s free-associative style inclusively riffs on prior forms, indebted to her realization that no shape or configuration can ever be truly original. The humility of homage in Cheung’s work is balanced in turn by her technical mastery; her developmental ingenuity is so acute that she is able to translate impulse, memory and reference onto photosensitive paper with the subtlest of gestures. 

With this process itself having become second nature, Cheung’s predilections as an artist and preoccupations as a citizen are able to make their way transparently into her work. In the artist’s “Intermediaries” series, Cheung uses slow-reacting cyanotype to create abstract works that seem to map islands, river deltas or erosion itself. In a process that can take up to several days, the artist allows her chemistry to evaporate naturally, in a manner indicative of the slow creep of time and loss of water that defines humanity’s relationship with climate catastrophe. Taking up the same process as was historically used to make blueprints, Cheung’s Intermediary works are like designs for a future of ceded control, capturing the chaos of durations we are not accustomed to monitoring. Concern for the climate also comes out in the artist’s “Reclaim” sculptures – topographic models of islands constructed from nylon flocking, a non-recyclable form of compressed microplastic. Inspired by man-made landmasses such as Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah or even the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Cheung’s works hang in lucite display cases like real estate offerings: a scathing reminder that no man is an island. 

Natalie Cheung, Reclaim : Model Islands (series of 6), 2021, 16″x16″/each, micro nylon fiber, paper, paint & plaster

Born in Virginia to a first-generation Chinese family, a formative artistic influence for Cheung was her mother’s practice of intricate chuāng huā papercuts, made on sheets of printer paper in honor of the Lunar New Year. Incorporating another form of alternative process photography, Cheung’s “Rock. Paper. Scissors.” series places these designs against a darkroom projector, blowing them up to monumental reliefs captured on photographic sheets. The resulting works carry the grandiosity and simplicity of Barnett Newman’s abstractions, though they are weighted with the significance of Cheung’s history and heritage. Open to the element of chance as she lets light slip in between the slivers of these shapes, such works are a synthesis of the artist’s great themes: balancing inevitability and accident in a delicate dance. 

Artist Natalie Cheung with her Rock Paper Scissors Series

Natalie Cheung (b. Falls Church, Virginia) received her MFA in Photography from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and her BFA in Photography from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally; she has been profiled in Washington Spaces Magazine and has had work represented in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Art, Houston and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Cheung currently teaches at the George Washington University and has previously taught at the Corcoran College of Art + Design and Temple University, Tyler School of Art. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2014.

Available Artwork by NATALIE CHEUNG

On view by appointment at Morton Fine Art, 52 O St NW #302, Washington, DC 20001

info@mortonfineart.com, http://www.mortonfineart.com, (202) 628-2787 (call or text)