News
Exhibition, Art Along the Rivers
Saint Louis Art Museum, St Louis, Missouri
October 2021- January 2022, Three photographs from Significant & Insignificant Mounds were included in the exhibition, Art Along the Rivers at the Saint Louis Art Museum. The show presented works of art that were produced and collected over the past 1000 years in the region along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. My work was part of the group of works entitled Art As Advocate. It was an honor to have been included among so many powerful and moving works.
Memorial
for Larry Giles, at the National Building Arts Center, Sauget, Illinois
August 2021, Though it was no solace for his untimely death, the ability to contribute my work to the celebration of the life of visionary Larry Giles was a true honor. Larry was founder and lifeblood of the National Building Arts Center in Sauget, Illinois. The banner photographs I created blew in the wind and might have gathered some of Larry's presence.
Overflow, exhibition
Q.arma Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota
July- September 2021, The exhibition was conceived in parallel to the Many Waters exhibition held at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, building upon the work produced and relationships built during the 2019 gathering of artists, researchers and activists involved with the Mississippi. An Anthropocene River project. In October - December 2021, the show traveled to the beautiful Watershed Art and Ecology in Chicago, Illinois. The exhibition will continue to follow the water downstream finding its way to the mouth of the Gulf waters in Louisiana, USA.
The Current, exhibition
Exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin Germany
October 2020-February 2021, The exhibition The Current presented a diverse range of field study engagements by artists, scholars and activists who were involved in the HKW project, Mississippi. An Anthropocene River focusing on site specific investigations addressing ecological, social, political, and spatial conditions along the Mississippi River.
The Shape of a Practice
with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin Germany
The Shape of a Practice brought together artists, activists, scientists and academics from across the world to share research material that try to understand and respond to the Anthropocene through knowledge practices and local contexts.
The research material was collectively gathered and shared in four different practice-based seminars: Communicating, Sensing, Archiving and Consensus Building.
Mississippi. An Anthropocene River
with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin Germany
A multi-year, multi-disciplinary research project intersecting art, science and communitiesWork from Significant & Insignificant Mounds was part of Field Station 3 Anthropocene Vernacular programing.
Standard of Repose
Published in Forty-Five : A Journal of Outside Research
February 2021, A selection of my photographs from Standard of Repose (or Mediation on a Fallen Radio Tower) and amazing essay by Jesse Vogler has been published in the journal Forty-Five !!
Download full essay and fantastic accompanying review in the Journal here.
them, now, and thereafter
Exhibition at Monaco Gallery
The exhibition, them, now and thereafter was on view at Monaco Gallery in September 2020. Works focused on multiple processes of building and unbuilding, and considered how a relationship to physical and transitory spaces might provided essential points of connection. The land becomes a repository that forms the foundation for communication. Embedded in the works is an acknowledgement that longing and absence are intertwined.
Mississippi River Views Exhibition
Exhibition at the Sheldon Art Galleries
The exhibition, Mississippi River Views was on view from February until March 2020. The exhibit was conceived and scheduled to align with the Mighty Mississippi River show at the Missouri History Museum. The Sheldon's exhibition was cut short when the Galleries had to close due to Covid-19 shutdowns. I was able to give an artist talk on March 3, 2020 and share my work around the Mississippi River - specifically speaking about the American Bottom landscape.
This generous award offers artists the time and space to deepen existing work or explore new creative projects. Each year ten Fellowship Awards are granted to a diverse set of artists from the Greater St. Louis Region. I am thrilled to be one of the selected Visual Artist recipients for the year 2020.
Real Estate Row : A Commission with the Luminary
The Erasures of Historic Architecture in Downtown St Louis
This installation intervenes at the site of erased St Louis architectural histories. Sitting along the old "Real Estate Row", this space at 7th St and Pine once held some of the grandest examples of the nation's building structure and detail. Today demolished and replaced with parking structures and new office space, the memory of its significance is all but lost. Much of the buildings' features and materials now live in Sauget, Illinois at the National Building Arts Center. This life work of Mr. Larry Giles is a visionary endeavor to salvage, preserve, archive and present the history of St Louis' past, with and eye toward possible futures for research and preservation. My photographs made at the National Building Arts Center sit alongside archival photographs of buildings which once stood in this Downtown area and call attention to acts of erasure and loss, building and un-building, memory and amnesia which are present within sites of architectural significance.
Significant &Insignificant Mounds on Billboards
Re-Occupying the Site of Big Mound in St Louis
As part of our ongoing work Significant & Insignificant Mounds, Jesse Vogler and I installed billboards on the site where the historic Big Mound once stood. The massive Native American mound was destroyed in the mid-1800's, the earth used for backfill and road construction. We re-occupy the site with a historic photograph made by Thomas Easterly in 1869, and a photograph I made in 2018 at the Cahokia Mounds Historic site in Collinsville Illinois. The billboards can be seen driving North on I-70 W or by taking the St Louis Ave exit at 10th and La Beaume Streets.
On view until November 2019.
Significant & Insignificant Mounds
Re-Occupying the Site of Big Mound in St Louis
Other side of our billboard at 10th St. Re-occupying the site of Big Mound in St Louis. Photograph made by Thomas Easterly in 1869. Original photograph held at the Missouri History Museum in St Louis, Missouri.
Extracts from The American Bottom: On view at G-CADD
Installation shot from "Extracts from The American Bottom", G-CADD, Granite City, Illinois
Growing out of a year long series of excursions and think tank sessions, the exhibition Art + Landscape drew together artists considering broad intersections of art, landscape, and the environment. The exhibition and accompanying public programing and events were part of the wider initiative organized by HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin) and the Max Planck Institute (Berlin), Mississippi. An Anthropocene River.
Exhibition and programing March-April 2019
New Territory: Landscape Photography Today
I am thrilled to be included in the New Territory exhibition at the DAM. Conceived and curated by Eric Paddock. The exhibit focuses on contemporary photographers as they move beyond traditional approaches to the long tradition of representing the land and landscape. Show is open June 24- September 16, 2018.
Excellent article by James McAnally, in Art in America, featuring projects: Significant & Insignificant Mounds and The American Bottom with Jesse Vogler. The article speaks about work that we and other St Louis area artists are doing in response to and with inspiration from, this landscape.
As part of the Charting the American Bottom project, the exhibition opened in the Mobile Field Unit. A wonderful array of people braved the November cold and rain to come to the Granite City Art & Design District (G-CADD). Situated in the shadows of Granite City Steel Corp. Jesse Vogler and I display more than 80 photographs made over the last 4 years. Placing the photographs back within the landscape from which they have been made is part of this ongoing work. We have also gifted a number of photographs made around the Bottoms to various localities including the Sauget Village Hall, The National Building Arts Center, town libraries, post offices and local museums.
My work, Wasteland Ecology , on view at the KunstHaus Wein, Museum Hundertwasser.
I was invited to Vienna to participate in the accompanying symposium Living in the Anthropocene.
The show is beautiful, they city is vibrant and inviting. I was very honored to be present. The museum is a perfect venue to consider the relationship between all kinds of human impacts on the natural world. The diversity of artistic expressions and the questions raised in this show is a testament to thoughtful curation. There is an excellent catalog with texts and selected images from each artist.
Speaking in raumlaborberlin's Space Buster, September 2017
at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St Louis, MO
The evening was a wonderful opportunity to participate in the Edge of Everything Else series of discussions. The event, held within the unique inflated bubble of raumlaborberlin's Spacebuster, was held on a sweltering late September evening in what felt like a human green house. The irony was not lost. Sharing my Wasteland Ecology series opened to discussion about effects of climate change and my creative process along the edgeland spaces of the Metro St. Louis region.
What a night! So many people came out to view! Over 340 people attended opening night, and in the first month the show has been up, another 300 (plus) have come by to view. As the show continues (until August 26, 2017), we reach out to community in all kinds of ways.
Next up. April 7, an artist talk with all three artists, Denise Ward-Brown, Dail Chambers and I will be sharing our process and speaking about the ways the exhibition seeks to unveil the complex history, cultural identity, politics, and social connection that are entwined in this historic and once largest African American cemetery in the St Louis region.
The exhibition and accompanying symposium curated, by director Gisela Parak contributes a contemporary perspective on years following the 1975 New Topographics exhibition. Photographers, writers, historians, landscape theorists have found inspiration in the original exhibition. I was honored to be part of this exciting project.