A glimpse at the work of VCUarts visiting faculty

What are you specialized in and what did you teach VCU arts students when you came to VCU?

• I’m a filmmaker and one of the things I’m best known for is my multi-projector performances (using up to eight projectors total, including six 16mm projectors). One of those film performances is what I did during my visit to Richmond.

What inspires your art?

• Whether I’m shooting original footage or using some kind of found footage from popular media or old educational films, I think what I’m most inspired by is exploring the ideologies embedded in those texts and places and objects that make up our everyday lives. I’m interested in the world around us and I use experimental forms to explore our collective blind spots in that world. But I can also equally be inspired by just some idea about material and trying to do something with the film itself or a specific camera or a new technique that I’ve never tried before.

What advice do you give VCU students trying to break out in their art form?

• Persevere. It took me about five years to start making films that I feel were/are really working. I was very fortunate to have a supportive context around me as I was doing those five years of exploration, and it allowed me the positive feedback and encouragement I needed to continue making work, but I’ve seen too many people give up before they find their idiom or their project. The world doesn’t always make it easy to hang in there.
  

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Ernesto Pujol was a visiting lecturer who came to VCU on April 11. He gave a workshop titled “Performing the Human Spirit: Reclaiming Religion as Credible Material for Art Making in the West.” It was presented by the Marcia Powell Festival of Religion and the Arts at VCU.

What are you specialized in and what did you teach VCU arts students when you came to VCU?

• ​I am a performance artist, but I only did graduate art studio critiques, during a special visit, giving creative feedback to the students on a multitude of different ambitious projects.​

What inspires your art?

• ​The evolving flow of the human condition​ and the sustainability of American democracy, which needs space for silent reflection about our past, present and future.

What advice do you give VCU students trying to break out in their art form?

• ​I would not use a “break out” expression. It is a life practice, not a business practice. My advice in developing their art work, in addition to an intellectual life and skills, is to foster interiority in order to find their voice as the foundation to finding the voice of their society.
  

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Christian Patterson is an artist who gave a lecture on Oct. 27 in the Student Commons here at VCU. Patterson is a photographer who often accompanies his photography with drawings, paintings, objects or sound. His work Redheaded Peckerwood won the 2012 Recontres d’Arles Author Book Award and is not in its third printing.

What are you specialized in and what did you teach VCU arts students when you came to VCU?

• My work is most often pre-conceptualized and begins with photographs that are the heart of the work, and are then surrounded, complemented and informed by other mediums and other materials — and depending on the project, these things could include documents, objects, paintings or readymade sculptures. I work with both appropriated and original materials, and I freely mix the two. And crucially, I also never indicate the source of my materials. There is often a certain expectation of truth and representation associated with the medium of photography, and this is a real gift to me and my work. The preconceived notion of truth and the expectation of a certain reality in fact end up creating endless opportunities for me to do whatever I want, after the fact — to fracture things and explore the spaces in between; to create my own little world in my work.

What inspires your art?

• A natural curiosity, a juvenile sense of humor, an interest in materials, an appreciation for the endless possibilities found between fact and fiction, an obsessive nature and a wild imagination.

What advice do you give VCU students trying to break out in their art form?

• Sleep a lot, dream a lot, follow your imagination, have fun, and take your time.

Nir Evron is a Tel Aviv-based Israeli artist who opened a new solo show at the Depot Gallery on Nov. 6. On Oct. 5, he held a lecture presented by VCU Photography and Film at the Depot that dealt with kinetic imaging. Evron has been included in group exhibitions at venues such as the New Museum, New York; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and more. He explores the intersections of history and media, time and technology, and the relationship between the documenter, the documented and the viewer.

Daphne Fitzpatrick is an American Contemporary artist who held a lecture presented by VCU Sculpture and Photography and Film at the Depot on Nov. 2. She comes from Long Island, New York, and has had solo exhibitions at Bellwether, New York and La Galleria at La MaMa, New York.

Nayland Blake held a lecture at the Student Commons Theatre on Nov. 5. The lecture was presented by VCU sculpture and extended media. Interracial desire, same-sex love and racial and sexual bigotry are recurrent themes in Blake’s sculptures, drawings, performances and videos. In 2012, Blake was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, which is intended to award artists who have demonstrated great ability in their craft.

The General Sisters presented a lecture on Nov. 3 at the VCU Fine Arts Building  presented by VCU Sculpture and Extended Media. General Sisters is a general store located in North Braddock, Pennsylvania, which focuses on feeding the community by confronting the racial and economic injustices evident in the national food system, and working actively to change them.