Susan Worsham—Bittersweet/Bloodwork
Exhibition Dates: September 4–October 19, 2012
Gallery Reception: September 13, 5–7 pm
Light Work is pleased to announce the exhibition Bittersweet/Bloodwork, featuring the works of Southern photographer Susan Worsham. The photographs were taken in and around Virginia, where her family has passed but the soil remains rich with memory and metaphor. All together, the photographs and accompaniments in Bittersweet/Bloodwork speak of the poetry of childhood, nature, discovery, love, and loss.
When Susan was just eighteen her brother took his own life after severing his spinal cord in a motorcycle accident. As a young girl she had already lost her father to a heart attack, and finally in 2004, she lost her mother as well. According to Worsham, “Shortly after my mother passed I came across a set of antique veterinary slides. They were some of the most interesting things that I had ever seen. They seemed to hold beauty and death at the same time. I framed ninety of them in a long wooden frame resembling the shape of the slide itself. It was the first piece of art that I made after my mother died.”
The story came full circle one day when Worsham’s oldest neighbor Margaret brought out her dissection kit and microscope slides. She had been a biology teacher, and was holding the same sort of slides that fascinated Worsham. Margaret’s microscope and slides have since become a metaphor for Worsham’s desire to look deeper into the landscape of her childhood—from the flora and fauna to the feelings, Margaret calls it ‘blood work’.
The exhibition features a selection of Margaret’s dissection tools alongside her microscope, as well as audio of their various conversations about plants, life, and death. “I can remember one particular time when I visited Margaret,” says Worsham. “I looked out of her large picture window and saw what looked like a nest or hammock of small red berries draped between the winter trees. I asked Margaret what it was. She answered, ‘Why, that’s bittersweet. Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane.”
Worsham took her first photography class while studying graphic design in college. In 2009 she was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography, and her book Some Fox Trails in Virginia won first runner up in the fine art category of the Blurb Photography Book Now International Competition. In 2010 she was awarded the first TMC / Kodak Film Grant, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work. Her work is held in private collections, and has been exhibited at the Corcoran Museum during FotoWeek DC, The Photographic Center Northwest, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and Dean Jensen Gallery. She was recently named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2011.
Also on view at this time is The Other New York: 2012, featuring work by Sarah Averill, Bang-Geul Han, Mark McLoughlin, Jan Nagle, and Matthew Walker. TONY: 2012 is organized by the Everson Museum of Art in collaboration with ArtRage—The Norton Putter Gallery, Community Folk Art Center, Erie Canal Museum, Light Work, Onondaga Historical Association, PuntodeContacto/Point of Contact, Rosamond Gifford Zoo, Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, SUArt Galleries, Urban Video Project, The Warehouse Gallery, City of Syracuse and XL Projects. Major funding is provided by The Central New York Community Foundation through the John F. Marsellus Fund.
Gallery hours for these exhibitions are Sunday-Friday, 10am-6pm (except school holidays), and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Parking Garage.
Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.
Light Work Annual 2012: Shane Lavalette
/in Close ReadingsWill with Banjo, 2011, Shane Lavalette
Read the rest of the essay in Contact Sheet 167: The Light Work Annual 2012.
Subscribe to Contact Sheet here.
Susan Worsham: Conversations with Margaret Daniel
/in NewsSusan Worsham’s exhibition Bittersweet/Bloodwork features audio recordings of Worsham and her older neighbor Margaret Daniel’s conversations about plants, life, and death. All together, the photographs and accompaniments in Bittersweet/Bloodwork speak of the poetry of childhood, nature, discovery, love, and loss.
“I can remember one particular time when I visited Margaret,” says Worsham. “I looked out of her large picture window and saw what looked like a nest or hammock of small red berries draped between the winter trees. I asked Margaret what it was. She answered, ‘Why, that’s bittersweet. Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane.’”
Read more about Susan Worsham’s Bittersweet/Bloodwork here.
Community Darkrooms Member Spotlight: Bob Burdick
/in LabCommunity Darkrooms Member Spotlight
Bob Burdick has been a long-time Community Darkrooms member, with his first visit taking place in 1977 when co-founders Tom Brian and Phil Block were here to greet him. According to Bob, “The nice thing about this facility is that it is and always has been open to anyone.” He especially enjoys being around the other artists who use Community Darkrooms because he gets to show people what he is doing and he can learn what others are up to. Recently, with the help of CD’s digital expert John Mannion, Bob was able to scan a medium format negative, make adjustments, and output it so he could make the perfect platinum print. Then he and Lab Manager Andy Baugnet took to the darkroom and coated a few sheets of Rives BFK paper and began testing the process with exposure in full sun for about ten minutes. Bob’s persistence and passion resulted in the creation of Cedar Tree, Clark Reservation, 1980.
If you have an interest in learning more about any area of photography, now is the time to investigate all that Community Darkrooms has to offer. Exciting Fall courses are now listed on our website and there will undoubtedly be something to fit your interests and skill level—whether it’s a three-hour Single Session Workshop called Camera Basics on Location which will cover everything from turning your camera on to figuring out the built-in-flash unit, or you want to immerse yourself in a 4-week Firm Foundation Workshop called Fine Art Digital Printing which is for the advanced image maker who wants to make the “perfect” print, or anywhere in between—you can find it here at a great price!
Light Work Annual 2012: Andrew Miksys
/in Close Readings– Laimonas Briedis, author of Vilnius: City of Strangers
Read the rest of the essay in Contact Sheet 167: The Light Work Annual 2012.
Subscribe to Contact Sheet here.
Light Work Annual 2012: Amy Elkins
/in Close Readings14/38 (Not the Man I Once Was), 2009, Amy Elkins
— Bill Sullivan, Artist
Read the rest of the essay in Contact Sheet 167: The Light Work Annual 2012.
Subscribe to Contact Sheet here.
From the Files: A Postcard from Stephen Chalmers
/in From the FilesWe form long-term relationships with most artists we work with, whether it’s through our residency program, our publications, or our exhibitions. Our artists choose a variety of ways to keep us informed about what they’re doing, including email, Facebook posts, in-person visits, phone calls, and mailed notices for exhibitions and other life events.
One of our favorite update notices of all time came from Stephen Chalmers, who was a resident with us in 2007 and later showed his photoraphs at Light Work in the exhibition titled Unmarked, and was published in Contact Sheet 156. Stephen sent this postcard in 2009 when he was getting ready to move from Portland to Ohio to teach at Youngstown State University, where he still works. A card like this is definitely a great way to update your friends and contacts.
Light Work Annual 2012: Michael Tummings
/in Close ReadingsNorfolk Boy I, 2010, Michael Tummings
— Elizabeth A. Brown, former chief curator of the Henry Art Gallery
Read the rest of the essay in Contact Sheet 167: The Light Work Annual 2012.
Subscribe to Contact Sheet here.
From the Files: Alessandra Sanguinetti
/in From the FilesAt Light Work we hosts exhibitions in our main gallery four times a year. The shows feature work by cutting-edge artists who receive recognition not only in our gallery but also in the issues of Contact Sheet that are published concurrently with the exhibitions. For many artist, this is their first significant national exposure.
Alessandra Sanguinetti was a Light Work Artist-in-Residence in 2002. In 2003, she had an exhibition of her work in the main gallery. The subject of this exhibition was a series of images that she began making while photographing farmers and their lives on the land around Buenos Aires, Argentine. Sanguinetti met two cousins, Guille and Belinda, ages 9 and 10, and started a five-year collaborative project. Sanguinetti explored the girls’ growth into young adults by photographing them in their fantasy and dream spaces. The resulting images became the exhibition The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams and the subject of Contact Sheet 120. (Sorry, the print edition of Contact Sheet 120 sold out long ago, but of course you can look at it, and every other Contact Sheet ever published, online by purchasing a paid subscription, which gets you access to our fabulous Digital Archive. Click here for details.)
While her exhibition was in the main gallery, a group of local children came in for a tour. Sanguinetti was in town at the time and happily talked with them about the work. The pictures you see here are just three of the dozens of thank you notes sent to the artist by the children after their visit. Enjoy!
Welcome Andy Baugnet, Lab Manager
/in Lab, NewsLight Work/Community Darkrooms is pleased to introduce our newest employee, Andrew Baugnet, who joined the staff in July as Lab Manager.
Baugnet brings twenty five years of professional photography experience to the position, where he is responsible for managing all aspects of the lab facility. His responsibilities range from direct member assistance and interaction, to course and workshop design and planning, to staff and administrative management, and more.
During his career, Baugnet has produced a broad range of work varying from traditional landscape photographs, to photographic documentation projects for the Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) which is administered by the Library of Congress. His most recent project Picturing the Grange, an ongoing architectural documentation of Grange Halls throughout Upstate NY, has been acquired by the Plowline Images of Rural New York Collection at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, NY. Baugnet is a graduate of Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Prior to joining Light Work, he held the position of master printer at Hank’s Photographic outside New York City. His work has been exhibited nationally, and is included in such collections as the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Minnesota and Wisconsin Historical Societies, among others. He studied under photographer Frank Gohlke who taught him the subtleties of black-and-white printing.
Stop by to meet him and learn more about Community Darkrooms!
Susan Worsham: Bittersweet/Bloodwork
/in ExhibitionsLight Work is pleased to announce the exhibition Bittersweet/Bloodwork, featuring the works of Southern photographer Susan Worsham. The photographs were taken in and around Virginia, where her family has passed but the soil remains rich with memory and metaphor. All together, the photographs and accompaniments in Bittersweet/Bloodwork speak of the poetry of childhood, nature, discovery, love, and loss.
When Susan was just eighteen her brother took his own life after severing his spinal cord in a motorcycle accident. As a young girl she had already lost her father to a heart attack, and finally in 2004, she lost her mother as well. According to Worsham, “Shortly after my mother passed I came across a set of antique veterinary slides. They were some of the most interesting things that I had ever seen. They seemed to hold beauty and death at the same time. I framed ninety of them in a long wooden frame resembling the shape of the slide itself. It was the first piece of art that I made after my mother died.”
The story came full circle one day when Worsham’s oldest neighbor Margaret brought out her dissection kit and microscope slides. She had been a biology teacher, and was holding the same sort of slides that fascinated Worsham. Margaret’s microscope and slides have since become a metaphor for Worsham’s desire to look deeper into the landscape of her childhood—from the flora and fauna to the feelings, Margaret calls it ‘blood work’.
The exhibition features a selection of Margaret’s dissection tools alongside her microscope, as well as audio of their various conversations about plants, life, and death. “I can remember one particular time when I visited Margaret,” says Worsham. “I looked out of her large picture window and saw what looked like a nest or hammock of small red berries draped between the winter trees. I asked Margaret what it was. She answered, ‘Why, that’s bittersweet. Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane.”
Worsham took her first photography class while studying graphic design in college. In 2009 she was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography, and her book Some Fox Trails in Virginia won first runner up in the fine art category of the Blurb Photography Book Now International Competition. In 2010 she was awarded the first TMC / Kodak Film Grant, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work. Her work is held in private collections, and has been exhibited at the Corcoran Museum during FotoWeek DC, The Photographic Center Northwest, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and Dean Jensen Gallery. She was recently named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2011.
Also on view at this time is The Other New York: 2012, featuring work by Sarah Averill, Bang-Geul Han, Mark McLoughlin, Jan Nagle, and Matthew Walker. TONY: 2012 is organized by the Everson Museum of Art in collaboration with ArtRage—The Norton Putter Gallery, Community Folk Art Center, Erie Canal Museum, Light Work, Onondaga Historical Association, PuntodeContacto/Point of Contact, Rosamond Gifford Zoo, Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, SUArt Galleries, Urban Video Project, The Warehouse Gallery, City of Syracuse and XL Projects. Major funding is provided by The Central New York Community Foundation through the John F. Marsellus Fund.
Gallery hours for these exhibitions are Sunday-Friday, 10am-6pm (except school holidays), and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Parking Garage.
Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.
Capturing Identity: Selections from the Light Work Collection
/in ExhibitionsMichael Bühler-Rose
Light Work is pleased to present Capturing Identity: Selections from the Light Work Collection in the Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery. This exhibition, curated from the Light Work Collection by Museum Studies candidate Lindsay Erhardt, features work by Barry Anderson, Justyna Badach, Michael Buhler-Rose, Neil Chowdhury, Kelli Connell, Jen Davis, Rachel Herman, Laura Heyman, Ayana V. Jackson, Shane Lavalette, Ohm Phanphiroj, and Michael Tummings.
Identity can be personal, cultural, and religion-based, or determined by a relationship. It can be something forced upon you, defined for you, decided by you, and taken from you; yet, in many ways one’s identity is ever-changing and therefore indefinable. Through portraiture, and using photography as the tool, many artists today are asking us to question how we identify others and ourselves. Their imagery, consequently, is redefining and challenging our stereotypes and our understanding. It is important that artists take on this challenge—they become a vessel to bring about change, even if this change happens to the smallest degree.
These images are connected by pursuit of the distinguishable, the classifiable—identity. They are meant to stir something inside us—when we look upon them, we are made to think, question, challenge our upbringing and what we have been told. As we gaze upon them, they will gaze back. All of these photographs have and bestow power and it is left up to us what we do with it.
Photographs in this exhibition come from the Light Work Collection. With donations from the Artist-in-Residence Program (AIR) or artists receiving a Light Work Grant, the collection is constantly growing. It contains all original work, including color and black-and-white photographic prints, alternative processes, as well as computer generated imagery, collages, artist books, and installation pieces. The collection can be viewed and accessed through the online database via the Light Work website. Having a permanent collection exemplifies Light Work’s commitment to contemporary photography and the creative process.
Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.
Urban Video Project – The Other New York: 2012
/in ExhibitionsUrban Video Project, Light Work, and the Everson Museum of Art are pleased to present the video 401 Harrison Street by Karen Brummund at the UVP Everson site as part of The Other New York: 2012. This exhibition is part of a community-wide, multi-venue biennial exhibition that is the result of a major collaboration among fourteen art organizations in Syracuse. This ambitious project aims to highlight the rich talent of artists across Upstate New York, with a special focus on Central New York and the surrounding counties.
The Everson is I.M. Peiʼs first museum commission. His art museums are commonly seen as art objects for art objects. They are sculptures in the landscape. Shortly after the Everson, Pei built the Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca. In the 1960s, Pei continued to work in “the other New York,” including campus buildings in Syracuse, Fredonia, Rochester, and Buffalo. Whether one is walking across campus or through parking lots, watching the sunset or desolate streetscapes; Peiʼs geometry and concrete offer a visual dialogue with the environment.
In this site-specific video installation, images of the form and materials of both art museums are projected onto the Everson Museum. The images capture the light, surfaces, and depth of the architecture. The video uses images from two different buildings, analyzing how Peiʼs ideas bridge individual communities. These disparate places are abstractly connected through the architect’s development. The plaza is not only infused with the presence of the Pei’s forms, but also the conversation that takes place through his practice.
The projection acts as translucent paint altering the building. As it blends with the concrete facade, one becomes more sensitive to the details of the place. While visitors sit or walk through the plaza, 401 Harrison Street invites pedestrians to slow down, meditate, and be re-familiarized with our shared landscape.
For more information on TONY: 2012 gallery talks, tours, artist lectures, receptions, YouTube interviews, online activities, and venue maps please visit www.everson.org
TONY: 2012 is organized by the Everson Museum of Art in collaboration with ArtRage—The Norton Putter Gallery, Community Folk Art Center, Erie Canal Museum, Light Work, Onondaga Historical Association, PuntodeContacto/Point of Contact, Rosamond Gifford Zoo, Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, SUArt Galleries, Urban Video Project, The Warehouse Gallery, City of Syracuse and XL Projects. Major funding is provided by The Central New York Community Foundation through the John F. Marsellus Fund.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Urban Video Project (UVP) is a multimedia public art initiative of Light Work and Syracuse University that operates several electronic exhibition sites along the Connective Corridor in Syracuse, NY. The mission of UVP is to present exhibitions and projects that celebrate the arts and culture of Syracuse and engage artists and the creative community around the world. Light Work and UVP work closely with collaborative partner Everson Museum of Art in determining exhibitions and programming for that site. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work and UVP are members of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information visit www.urbanvideoproject.com.