GlimpSes of Life
Invitational Video Art Exhibit
DECEMBER 2020
“Glimpses of Life”, an invitational video art exhibition showcasing five different artists.
Allison Beaudry’s “Ektagraphic Narratives” explores the complexity of intergenerational family trauma.
Filmmaker Tom Hansell and photographer Joshua White’s collaborative animated film “Does Water Die?” looks at our relationship with the water cycle.
Sam Wohl’s social surrealist film “Manos” highlights working-class women in Uruguay and Argentina.
“My Father’s Clay” by Charles Snowden addresses performative masculinity and the artist’s relationship to a lineage of military men.
ARTISTS: Allison Beaudry, Charles Snowden, Tom Hansell & Joshua White, Sam Wohl
ALLISON BEAUDRY
Ektagraphic Narratives examines intergenerational trauma and the familial roots of gun violence. This video presents all of my family member’s stories as holding equal value.
The tensions and contradictions remain, providing outsiders with an unvarnished assessment of the ambiguities inherent within families and the social and political insight that this view provides. The result is not a neat conclusion. The pain remains. Through vulnerability, I hope to make the trauma my family has experienced relatable and universal to others.
My goal within this work is to process my family’s past to help create a future that I am content living in.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: My work is focused on perceptions and expectations of the body, womanhood, family, and memories. I unearth objects and photographs passed down in my family and collect strange and often obsolete objects from dumpsters and thrift stores to physically interact with and utilize within the studio. By utilizing found objects and altering their form, function, and outward perception, I examine clashing social ideological issues.
The sources of my imagery have roots in 1950s nostalgia and bridge the gap between what are often seen as the “good ol’ days” and the present. I work closely with the objects and interact with them as props within performance/video and sculpture to uncover an object’s history and how it has affected my life and the life of those around me.
CHARLES SNOWDEN
Looking at my relationship to a lineage of military men, I address the maintenance of militarized behavior using fantasies and mythos surrounding the service. Clays analogous relationship with the body gives form to complex and alienating factors concerning performative masculinity. The resulting object indexes the physical and psychological demands on the body in a way that cannot be fully legible. This visual inquiry seeks to encourage intimate and vulnerable experiences that break away from stereotyped visions of masculinity.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Born in Vista, California, Charles Snowden currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He earned a BA in Studio Art with a Minor in Art History at Humboldt State University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Fine Art at UCLA.
TOM HANSELL & JOSUA WHITE
This animated video is a collaboration between filmmaker Tom Hansell and photographer Joshua White. First, photographic paper is drenched in water from the New River near the artists’ homes in Ashe County, North Carolina. Next, organic and manmade materials gathered from the river are placed on the photographic paper and exposed in direct sunlight,
all within sight of the river. Finally, these images are digitally animated and natural sounds from the river are added to complete the film, which looks at our relationship with the water cycle.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS: Tom Hansell is a filmmaker, author and artist who creates work that explores relationships between energy, community, and nature.
His work has screened at the Museum of Modern Art and has been included in the Southern Circuit tour of independent filmmakers. Hansell began his career at the Appalshop media arts center in Kentucky and currently teaches at Appalachian State University.
Joshua White uses photography and mixed media to investigate memory, mortality, and ecology and to understand how he fits into the world. His images have been shown nationally and internationally, and his work has been featured by National Geographic, Fraction Magazine, Wired, Don’t Take Pictures, Gizmodo, and many others. He received his MFA in Photography from Arizona State University and is an AssociateProfessor and the Photography Area Coordinator in Studio Art at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.
SAM WOHL
Manos is a social surrealist film about working class women in Uruguay and Argentina. In a dream-like language, woven by hands, ants, and liquidity, and “time-zones of labor” of fisherwomen, manicurists, protestors, glove inspectors, clinicians, and mothers, rises a chorus of care, resistance, trauma, and collective action.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Aesthetics of North American sci-fi films of the late 20th century have been imprinted into my subconscious. Elements of this genre include expressive props, hyperbolic characters, magic powers, and exaggerated dialogue. In the mainstream, these elements are organized into narratives that reproduce the world view of the dominant culture.
My work in theatre and documentary re-configures these elements and outputs alternative temporal forms that offer space for my subconscious and the geo-political to interlace. This interlacing has provoked an excavation of the slippage between the aesthetics that attract me—of sci-fi genre—and the concepts that fascinate me–time, labor, and autonomous zones of horizontal mutual aide.
