Pins and Things
This summer I returned to school for an MFA degree at MICA-Maryland Institute College of Art. Designed as an interdisciplinary, low-residency program, it requires students to spend six intense weeks studying and making work in Baltimore for four summers, returning home in-between to do the same. I was hoping to branch out from my formal photographic concerns and get my work off the wall, outside the frame and into three-dimensional space. I experimented during the summer in the studio, following my mentor’s suggestion to distinguish the difference between “illustration” and “demonstration” of the ideas in my work. The freedom I felt in approaching art-making in such a new way led me back to my interest in light, shadow and space. I also became intrigued with the idea of rediscovering the familiar in unfamiliar ways. My final project was an installation of pins in all the existing holes in my studio walls. Viewers were invited into the darkened pin-lit room, slowly to discover the unexpected glistening shadows surrounding them. These are ideas that I continue to explore now that I have returned home.
To view a narrated slide show of this project, click here.