OCCURRENCESUNEXPECTED
The Kreeger UNEXPECTEDWashington,MuseumDCOCCURRENCES
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HelenDirectorChason The Kreeger Museum
THE COLLABORATIVE
David and Carmen Kreeger were devoted patrons of the arts and Kreeger served on the Board of Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art from 1965- 1989; he and Carmen Kreeger appreciated and supported countless Washington-area artists. They strengthened their contemporary holdings with works by Sam Gilliam, Simmie Knox, Thomas Downing, Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Ed McGowin, and Albert Stadler. Examples of acquisitions between 1967 and 1973 include: Untitled, 1969 by Gene Davis in 1969, Cape by Sam Gilliam and A Place: Suspendedby Simmie Knox, both shown at the 32ndBiennialExhibitionofContemporaryAmericanPainting at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1971, where David and Carmen Kreeger first saw the works before acquiring them in 1971. Pond and Constellation by Albert Stadler were both included in the 33 rd Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting in 1972 and were purchased directly from the artist by the Kreegers in In1973.addition to supporting Washington-based artists, the Kreegers established arts awards at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and Catholic University. They were aware of the social significance of contemporary artists as visual chroniclers of their time and generously shared their collection with the public. I am pleased to honor the Kreeger legacy of supporting Washington artists through The Collaborative, a program presenting powerful and thought-provoking exhibitions. We are thrilled to be in partnership with Hamiltonian Artists to present this exhibition and honored to champion these artists, providing many of them the opportunity to present their work in a museum for the first time.
“Acitywithoutarichartisticlandscapeisnotacity”DavidLloydKreegerFebruary1980WashingtonDossier
Hamiltonian Artists’ mission is to build a dynamic community of innovative artists and effective visual art leaders by providing professional development opportunities and advancing their entrepreneurial success. It is a dynamic catalyst for DC’s creative economy and a vibrant center for contemporary art in Washington, DC. Through its unique investment into the next generation of cutting-edge artists, Hamiltonian helps artists to develop important business skills, professional experiences, and visibility to support and sustain their art career. Through its Fellowship Program, artist talks, and public events, the organization contributes to the vitality of DC’s burgeoning arts scene by deepening the appreciation for contemporary art and culture throughout Washington, DC and beyond.
HAMILTONIAN ARTISTS
@hamiltonian_artistshamiltonianartists.org
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Anderson’s work explores the digital realm, often commenting on the human dependency on technology as we occupy space and time. She offers a poetic archive of abstract thought navigating digital platforms, disrupting mindless habits and behaviors through technology in her works Holes in the Digital Sphere (2015) and Seabed (2015). Anderson has an anti-art approach that begs the viewer to associate their own meaning with the subject in the work.
While the works from the permanent collection summarize the very foundations of fine art techniques, highlighting notable pioneers in abstraction, cubism, impressionism, and color field, the contemporary artists in the show offer their addition to the timeline as artists, offering a breadth of ideas and approaches including video, mixed media, sculpture, photography, encaustic, printmaking, and painting.
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Bravo utilizes new technologies to capture movement and time through photography. Different from the painted landscapes in the permanent collection, the panorama view, using an iPhone, captures a wide unbroken landscape. Within the technology itself, many distortions occur, stretching, repeating, and bending
CURATOR’S FOREWARD
Following the first Artist’s Choice series at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, (MOMA) in 1989, curated by Scott Burton, who was invited to select and comment on works from the Museum’s collection, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture Kirk Varnedoe stated, “We have to recognize that a crucial part of the modern tradition is the creative response of artists to the works of their peers and predecessors.”[source]
This modern tradition has propelled the art world forward. The discourse that surfaces from addressing the museum collection in conjunction with new works can be challenging, progressive, and revealing. This is an underlying motivation behind Unexpected Occurrences at The Kreeger Museum, which considers the many eras of fine art to develop a dialogue between old and new works. Hamiltonian Fellows Amber Eve Anderson, Maria Luz Bravo, Jason Bulluck, Joey Enriquez, Stephanie Garon, Madeline Stratton, and Lionel Frazier White have considered The Kreeger space and the permanent collection and chosen work in response.
Many works in the show such as Holes in the Digital Sphere (2015) by Amber Eve Anderson, Mahayana Analog Database 5 by Jason Bulluck, and one for the dead (2021) by Lionel Frazier White III, address and critique the collection as a timeline missing the voices of women, intersectional perspective, and diverse voices. Other works such as Stephanie Garon’s Void II (2022) and Madeline Stratton’s s Lumière Mouchetée dans les Arches (Speckled Light in the Arches) (2022), reflect the many textures and shapes of the museum architecture and collection of sculpture, painting, and works on paper.
10 of the image. The artist’s Panorama Series depicts the everyday abstraction as we move through seasons.
Using sculpture and encaustic, Bulluck explores the meaning of databases, from a Buddhist and Marxist framework, to consider the human contribution to systems through interaction. Similarly, to the ancient African and Asian sculptures in The Kreeger collection, the pieces Mahayana Analog Database 5 (2016) and Genotype Query (2019) represent the power in the preservation of the historic object, time, and philosophy, through an ontological perspective.
In Garon’s newest study, as an environmental artist, she draws attention to the global mining industry and its history by archiving the mines in the DC-Maryland-Virginia region and reutilizing extracted core samples from a mine in Pembrooke, Maine, to which she had direct access. She emphasizes the negative impacts of these industries on indigenous communities, local habitats, and the economy. The artist’s collection of cores seen in both Void I (2022) as a drawing and Void II (2022) as an outdoor sculpture is represented as a circular labyrinth to pay homage to the Passamaquoddy people, and to address the actual and metaphorical emptiness of the land caused by the extractions.
Stratton’s series of new paintings consider the specific shapes and shadows from The Kreeger terrace and color from the Claude Monet painting Cliffs at Les Petites-Dalles (Falaises aux Petites-Dalles, 1884) in the collection. Stratton is selective in the moments, and details derived from her memory of domestic spaces are represented through color, texture, and shape, inviting the viewer to engage in making playful connections as they navigate what was once the Kreeger family home.
White memorializes Black experiences through mixed media assemblage specifically referencing family legacy and spirituality. He materializes symbols, language, and the spirituality of Black culture through an assemblage of wood and found materials. Wood is a dominant material used across the collection of African masks commonly honoring spirits, and ancestors, on view adjacent to White’s work. His new work one for the dead (2021) is an homage to the African tradition, ritual, ceremony, and creative practice of mask-making. The works together, both removed from their cultural space, beg the viewer to indulge in the question: What is the importance of experiencing these works together in a museum now? Enriquez uses raw material to comment on labor, land, and how it connects to society, migration, and displacement. The artist carries the weight of histories forgotten by collecting brick and raw material, then rebuilds them into abstract sculptures and drawings. They centralize the word “ruin” in their work unrepresented, but present (2022) and fall red Appalachian trail, traveled north (2021), to bring to the forefront what is left behind as a valuable subject and material.
Tomora Wright Fellowship HamiltonianDirectorArtists With unconventional pairings of old and new works, the exhibition challenges the viewer to consider the nuances between medium and subject. All of the artists in Unexpected Occurrences are comfortable existing between and amongst the nuances found in traditional mediums and technologies, acknowledging how they shift over time to better address significant subjects then, now, and into the future.
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13 ARTISTSAmberEve Anderson 14 Maria Luz Bravo 18 Jason Bulluck 22 Joey Enríquez 26 Stephanie Garon 30 Madeline A. Stratton 34 Lionel Frazier White III 38
AMBER EVE ANDERSON @amber_anderambereveanderson.com
Amber Eve Anderson is a conceptual artist whose work explores the way one’s surroundings relate to their identity and behavior. She received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD (2016) where she continues to live and work.She has received funding from theFoundation for Contemporary Art, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and the Maryland State Arts Council. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post,Hyperallergic,and the Creator’s Project.She has been awarded residencies at Wagon Station Encampment in Joshua Tree, CA (2016), the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City (2016), and Pigment Sauvage in Montreal, Canada (2019). Amber is currently a fellow at Hamiltonian Artists in Washington, DC.
AmberLeft: Eve Anderson, Holes intheDigitalSphere (2015), Printed screenshots
My work as an artist pairs lyrical narratives with larger notions of home, memory, and identity. I vacillate between physical and digital worlds, combining images and found objects through installation and video while using artist books to physically archive digital phenomena. I am interested in the way one’s surroundings, whether virtual, handmade, or natural, come to shape one’s behavior and identity. I draw attention to everyday technologies by upsetting the usual means of interaction and thereby exposing the ways technologies can influence behavior. My work functions as a playful critique to imagine new ways of existing online. My conceptual practice pairs lyrical narratives based on personal experiences, with larger notions of home, memory, and identity. Leaving the place where I was born and raised, and spending a decade living abroad, forced me to reconsider the environment I had taken for granted, and recognize the impact it had on my behavior. In the process, my understanding of home became more expansive, coming to mean everything, from a geographic location to an architectural form and the furniture and objects within that form. More broadly, I became interested in the way one’s surroundings—whether natural, handmade or virtual—come to shape one’s identity and behavior.
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AmberRight: Eve Anderson, Seabed (2015), Singlechannel video
16 I’m most interested in the quotidian, everyday aspects of technology—the things that become so ingrained that they’re taken for granted. Google Maps, for example, has had a significant impact on the way people navigate space. Still, we rarely consider the platform as anything other than a tool for getting from one point to another. My work plays with digital platforms such as this to better understand the impact they have on one’s behavior. The two works I included in this exhibition address this theme. HolesintheDigitalSphere (2015) is a series of screenshots taken from Google Street View, in Rabat, Morocco, where I was living at the time I made this piece. These found images have a black hole at their center, which is an unintended consequence of the way users upload the images and speaks to the limitations of experiencing a place online versus in reality. In a similar vein, Seabed (2015) began as a series of photographs that I took of my bed sheets upon waking, over a one-month period. In the video, the photographs make up the pages of a book. Paired with the sound of waves, the intimate space of a bed is aligned with the vastness of the ocean.
17 AmberLeft: Eve Anderson, Holes in the Digital Sphere (2015), Printed screenshots AmberTop: Eve Anderson, Seabed (2015), Single-channel video AmberBottom:Eve Anderson, Seabed (2015), Single-channel video
My background as an architect provides me with a unique angle on the way I understand and interpret the built environment. I embark on deep dives in communities that traditionally are hard to penetrate and employ the methods of different disciplines and practices, such as urban and social studies, design, and city walking, to inform my projects. Placing myself in these spaces, I observe and research to incorporate complementary conceptual and spatial perspectives that reveal new angles to old problems and speculate from different points of view.
Maria Luz Bravo (1975, México) is a Mexican photographer who holds a Bachelor in Architecture and a Master of Arts in New Media Photojournalism by the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. Her body of work revolves on the use of space, both urban and architectural in the contemporary urban landscape to highlight major social phenomena, focusing primarily on cities in conflict, political boundaries, and community resilience. In Mexico, she has photographed the effects of violence in Ciudad Juarez and the political boundaries of México City. In the U.S. she has documented urban decline and racial and socioeconomic contrasts and community resilience mainly on the east coast. Her work has been exhibited and published in México, the USA, and Europe. In 2014 her work Reclaims was selected to be part of the XVI Photography Biennale in México. She currently is part of the 2020-2022 Hamiltonian Artists Fellowship.
@marialunesmarialuzbravo.net
18 MARIA LUZ BRAVO
Maria Luz lives and works between Washington, DC and México City. My body of work explores the contemporary city, with a particular focus on the intersection of physical space and social dynamics. Each of my projects speaks to different aspects of the human condition that can be observed in the built environment. My continuous challenge is to understand and document how the built spaces and the human activity in them interact and influence each other. Motivated to document the imprint of social phenomena and dynamics on space, my photographs intentionally omit the presence of people. My use of geometry, shape, and perspective creates movement that encourages the audience to explore the image. My preference for using wider angles allows the viewer’s eye to travel through the details as well as view the image as a whole. In every image, I hope to provide the viewer with enough elements to be able to stop and discover smaller fragments of the reality photographed that provides one with a better understanding of a place.
Moving Panoramas (2018) is an exercise that seeks to understand the dynamics that emerge from the relationship between the construction of the image and the construction of the landscape. The balance between the two lies in the social and cultural practices that cause change over time. What remains constant are the spatial and formal qualities and how the space is used. How it will transform over time depends on the social dynamics that take place in it. The result, most likely, will significantly differ from the original plan.
Similarly, the images in this series, influenced by factors such as speed and distance, play a determining role in the way in which the medium will be capable of translating it into the resulting image, altering and even in some instances, eliminating elements common to the photographic image such as perspective and depth.The intention of MovingPanoramas(2018) is not a result, but a latent process in which the limitations of the medium confront the translation of its immediate context, thus generating multiple interpretations of the work.
20 For this series, I use movement as a starting point to investigate the tension between the segments that make up the construction of the digital panoramic image, and the viewer’s perception of the reality captured as a specific moment in space and time.
MariaLeft: Luz Bravo, Moving Panoramas (2018), Digital photography, archival inkjet print
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Factors such as movement, speed, and distance determine the final result, so surrendering control of the process and regaining it later in the editing process is at the core of this project. Of the many ways to create a panoramic image or a multiperspective image, I chose the mobile camera because of its accessibility and widespread acceptance. My questions were: how can I tweak the software designed to create a seamless panoramic image, and what does that mean for the object of my photographic research the landscape. The technical aspects of the photographic act are linked to the subject in that the limitations of the construction of the image are married to the limitations of the construction (use and evolution) of the landscape, evidencing each other.
My work is grounded in early Indian, Mahayana, and especially Chan/Zen Buddhist psychology, epistemology, ontology, and personal histories as well as those of the Americas and Africa. I have engaged esoteric Mahayana Buddhism in search of expedient means to deploy a dialectic between epistemes West, Buddhist, and otherwise subaltern. I investigate the possibilities of epistemic and ontological harmonies in the offing of considering the critiques of post-Marxists, critical geographers, and black radical theorists vis-a-vis an engaged and critical Buddhism.
22 JASON BULLUCK
Jason Bulluck (b. Chester, PA; lives and works in Washington, DC) is an artist, writer, and teacher living in Washington, DC and working in both DC and Chicago. His work draws largely on the possibilities emerging from discourse between non-Western and Western world-building narratives. Bulluck holds a Masters of Fine Arts from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2018), a Masters in Education from George Washington University (2010) and a Bachelors in Fine Arts from Howard University (2005). Bulluck has exhibited his work nationally at galleries including Take Care Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, Sullivan Galleries in Chicago, IL, and Conner Contemporary in Washington, DC.
This performative allegory offered by making objects, installations, or performances helps to make the consideration of some Buddhist tenets, such as interdependent origination and emptiness, perhaps more ontologically legible.
JasonRight: Bulluck, Genotype Query 3 (2019), Western blot artist’s DNA gel electrophoresis-encaustic on paper
JasonLeft: Bulluck, Mahayana Analog Database 5 (2016), Wood, plaster and pigment
@jasonmbulluckjasonbulluck.com
My work included in this exhibition is part of a project involving producing a series of “Mahayana analog relational databases” that encourage meetings of disparate philosophical traditions through material encounters with a range of objects. The two database objects on display for Unexpected Occurrences one made of wood and the other a sort of DNA-encaustic—make formal gestures to be touched and are considered as work made in concert with the artist, viewers, material, space, etc. The relational database has made possible so much of the world we now recognize. While it, and more robust database designs, pose significant risks to liberatory projects, the relational database itself works well as a performative allegory of the notion that what seems separate and discrete can only exist in relation to all other things; we are deeply connected to one another and our surroundings.
24 My work is grounded in Buddhist thought and the personal histories of those from the Americas and Africa. I am concerned with the provocations of Black cultural theorists and the liberatory possibilities posed by engaging the work of a range of Black radical thinkers. I suspect that an end to anti-Blackness can end a vast amount of human oppression. And I am further devoted to the range of interventions that might emerge from a broader dialogue.
The analogy these objects offer, their interactions with viewers, and the Kreeger collection might offer opportunities to consider a broader discourse of liberation in the context of material culture and diverse analyses of anti-Black, and otherwise oppressive structures and histories.
JasonRight: Bulluck, Genotype Query 3 (2019), Western blot artist’s DNA Mahayanaonelectrophoresis-encausticgelpaper;JasonBulluck,AnalogDatabase5(2016),Wood,plaster,andpigment
The role of the database in our lives, especially as it relates to questions of how we see and know ourselves, others, and our environments, is outsized and maybe, for many of us, inscrutable if omnipresent. Databases organize so much of how we interact, and while that can feel threatening, it also makes contemporary life possible. The two databases on display in this exhibition put this way of understanding and being in the world into conversation with the discourses of liberation we inherit from centuries of struggle for Black equality and Buddhist thought. This is not unlike the formal gestures made by many of the iconic modernists in the Kreeger collection. Each of these traditions takes up kinds of minimalism and relies on audiences to make meaning of the relationships between material objects to make sense of the whole. The opportunity this exhibit provides for these kinds of interactions feels especially timely.
26 JOEY ENRÍQUEZ
For my most recent sculptures and installations,I collect scattered bricks along the Potomac River corridor in Washington, DC, while running. These bricks—eroded, crumbling, poking out of the ground—unremarkably cover portions of the trails and riverbank, blending in with the earth surrounding them. Removing them from the land returns them to an architectural state from a geologic existence; historic litter becomes recycled back into construction material. As I reconstruct them into half-architecture–half-ruin, they entrap detritus, trash, urban material, and our own context to frame and reconcile the histories of those that have lived in the District for decades. Through the lens of local archived materials, elements taken from maps and imagery of the area’s topography reflect the nature through which buildings, lives, and stories come to ruin.
DC, Joey Enríquez makes sculptural work and printmaking. Originally a graphic designer from Southern California, they transitioned from design to art in 2017 to explore a more interdisciplinary creative practice. In their most recent exhibition, ruined on a riverbank at Hamiltonian Artists in DC, Enríquez used bricks to convey the fragments of history that piece together contemporary realities, such as gentrification, access, displacement, and geographic infrastructure in the District. Their other work consists of clay monotype prints and digital renderings about location, movement through space, and passage of time. Enríquez earned their B.A. in Art–Design from California Lutheran University in 2018 and their M.F.A. in Fine Arts at George Washington University in 2020. They are currently a Fellow with Hamiltonian Artists in the 2020–2022 cohort and were awarded a residency through The Studios at MASS MocA in November 2021. Enríquez is also an adjunct professor at George Washington University, George Mason University, and Carroll Community College. In my work, I reposition and materialize the erasure of memory and experience, environmental decay, and movement through lineage and across temporal spaces. I explore the effects of generational trauma and the development of contemporary social relations, by looking at archives.
Based@culturewarcriminaljoeyenriquez.cominWashington,
JoeyRight:Enriquez, unrepresented but present (2022), Found brick, license plate, fence, and metal
Pinning down a discarded DC license plate, I contextualize the movement and struggle for DC statehood, through the weight of debris integral to the architectural formation of the capital.
While different in medium and composition, both works form abstractions of soil, brick, and physical experience on runs I’ve done along the Potomac River in Washington, DC, and the Appalachian Trail in North Adams, Massachusetts. In fall red appalachian trail, traveled north, I compress the environment of the Berkshire Mountains by fusing a flattened aerial perspective of the Appalachian Trail with an at-grade memory of my first run up the mountain. I then stake an index of my passage across the land with the existing signatures of fallen yellow leaves, imposing jagged stone, and brick fragments lodged in the soil. Similarly, I dislodged forgotten bricks from the banks of the Potomac River, and delicately stacked them into a pillar for unrepresented,butpresent.
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JoeyLeft: Enriquez, unrepresented but present (2022), Found brick, license plate, fence, and metalRight:Joey Enriquez, fall red Appalachian trail, traveled north (2021), Pigment dyed clay monotype print on Reemay sheet 34 gsm
Both of the works included in UnexpectedOccurrences, my fallredappalachiantrail,travelednorth (2021) and unrepresented,but present (2022), index land through imagined topographies and material histories.
29 Capitalism was created by systematizing bodies. Capitalism flattens difference into the quantification of a dollar sign. Edvard Munch printed his Grabende Arbeiter (1920) later in life when he had transitioned his practice into depicting landscapes that dealt with nature, farming, and the appreciation of working-class people. Relying on gestural markings to stylize and abstract, my print fall red appalachian trail, traveled north(2021) and Munch’s print are similar in their aesthetic depictions of the appreciation of the landscape.
However, in positioning the works in the context of the U.S., GrabendeArbeiter appears to blur the landscape out of existence, divorcing the figures of the men shoveling repetitiously. In the romanticization of the worker, there lies the replaceability of bodies working—anyone can be trained to shovel. These three street workers have no faces, and their movements are reduced to generalized scribbles; we can’t assume ability, age, or race. As I read Grabende Arbeiter through the lens of capitalist compression of the positions we occupy, I read my work, fallredappalachiantrail,travelednorth, as nearly the opposite. Through the abstraction of my objective optical perspective of the landscape and my physical, lived experience on the land, I embed the presence of my own body without presenting any corporeal form. The crisp Autumn air and vibrant foliage can be felt in the texture of the gestures of organic shapes separated by my linear presence between them.
My relationship with the land is one that is not just on and with but inherently felt. Feel me in the clay, the dust, and the Fall.
STEPHANIE GARON @garonstudiogaronstudio.com
Stephanie Garon received dual science degrees from Cornell University, then attended Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her environmental art has been exhibited internationally in London, Colombia, South Korea, as well as across the United States. Her writing, a critical aspect of her artistic process, has been published in international literary journals and her chapbook, ACREAGE, was published by Akinoga Press in December 2021 and is available at Politics & Prose Bookstore. She is a Hamiltonian Gallery Fellow,a National Park Service Artist-in-Residence in the Everglades, and recipient of a Puffin Foundation Environmental Art Asgrant.afive-year-old,
I tagged along with my father to “hamfests,” radio operator gatherings held in county fair parking lots. Cars would pop open their trunks like overflowing treasure chests filled with electronic wares: old radio boxes, computer boards, cables, monitors, soldering irons. It was an oasis in the heart of wooded valleys.
StephanieRight: Garon, Void II (2022), Extracted mine cores from Big Hill (Maine) Wabanacki Land
StephanieLeft: Garon, Void I (2022), Drawing of extracted mine cores from Big Hill Mine (Maine) Wabanacki Land
31 Years later, when I’m welding, and smelling the rusty steel odor of the studio, I am driving down those dusty roads again. My artwork investigates humanity’s interruption of nature. The juxtaposition of natural objects against industrial materials exposes dichotomies of formality and fragility, and permanence and impermanence. The natural materials, locally sourced by hand, convey themes of claim, women’s labor, and time. As ecologically motivated interventions, the physical process of decomposition becomes evident as the artworks change over time and emphasize the vulnerability of nature. These abstracted expressions visualize an uneasy truce. A contemporary twist on the Arte Povera movement, my work addresses climate crisis politics and mediates attention to the materials themselves. Whether the viewer witnesses the changing installation or navigates their movement around these works, the contemplative space created explores how we, as people, interrupt the natural world around us.
In the sculpture garden, Void II (2022) uses a circle shape inspired by Passamaquoddy labyrinths, and a hand-dug hole, to link the viewer to the land. Machines dig deep below the earth’s surface to obtain the cores, yet release gasses and dump chemicals into the environment. Operations may last several years but are often poorly monitored and devastate the local habitat and labor economy. In this case, acres and acres of timber have already been felled to make room for the machines.
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To learn more about mining and the cores, I met throughout the year with a team of geologists and earth scientists, including Dr. Edward Landa from the Department of Environmental Science and Technology at University of Maryland, and others from the Urban Soils Institute. I am indebted to Dwayne Tomah, Director of the Wabanacki Museum, for his time, teaching, and tour of the land. Both works are conceptually built on the theme of loss and impermanence. Manmade Man-made machines extracted the rock cores on land claimed by indigenous Passamaquoddy tribes. Humanity’s interruption of nature left physical, emotional, and economic cavities. While Void I showcases that link to the number of mines found in the DC Metropolitan area, VoidIIprovides the opportunity for the public to navigate their own path around the material: and reflect on our natural resources.
Void I (2022) is a drawing of the cavities of 324 extracted rock cores from Big Hill Mine in northeast Maine or Passamaquoddy land. The specific amount represents the number of mines located across the Maryland and DC region. Maryland mines are rich in iron, gold, copper, and silica, while Maine rocks contain a large amount of gold, silver, copper, and lead. Junior mining companies, like Wolfden Resources in Maine, extract cores to assess content and then try to sell the site to global mining companies for higher stock prices. Last year, Smithereen Farms employees were confronted numerous times by Wolfen representatives, and the Smithereen employees changed their locks three times to prevent theft of their cores.
StephanieLeft: Garon, Void I (2022), Drawing of extracted mine cores from Big Hill Mine (Maine) Wabanacki Land
Madeline A. Stratton (b. 1987) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator originally from Memphis, TN currently living and working in Washington, DC. In 2018 she completed her Multidisciplinary MFA in the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art where she received a merit scholarship. She holds an MA in History of Art and the Art Market from Christie’s Education and a BA in Studio Art and History of Art from Vanderbilt University. She has exhibited in group exhibitions throughout the United States as well as solo exhibitions in Washington, DC. In 2018 she completed the Keyholder Residency at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, MD where she later stayed on as a Printshop Associate. She is a 2021 recipient of the DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities Art Bank Grant. In her work she enjoys exploring ideas of memory and the juxtaposition of presence and absence. Stratton was a member of the Sparkplug Collective with DC Arts Center, and she is currently a Hamiltonian Fellow with Hamiltonian Artists. When not in her studio, Stratton currently teaches upperschool art at St. Albans School.
MADELINE A. STRATTON @madeline.a.strattonmadelineastratton.com
35 My work is an investigation of the memory and importance of domestic objects and spaces. Using traditional media such as paint, textiles, thread, and printmaking, I challenge myself to create representations stemming from my memory. By creating silhouettes of objects and simplified structures of empty spaces, I aim to convey both absence and belonging. I search for ways to memorialize and find comfort in the objects of daily rituals, and the spaces in which they take place. While drawing from places and times specific to me, I hope the viewer can enter into a reflective journey of their own space and memory. The three paintings I’ve created for this exhibition were made in response to experiencing the space and permanent collection of The Kreeger Museum. My practice focuses on memories of domestic spaces, and the objects that occupy those spaces. Drawing from the amazing architecture of this building felt like a natural fit with my practice, and including elements from the collection that the Kreegers lived with within their home was a wonderful addition.
MadelineRight: A. Stratton, (2022), Les ombres du jardin (The Shadows in the Garden), Acrylic on wood
36 After our initial site visit to the museum, two elements struck a chord in me, and I knew I wanted to incorporate them into my work for the show: the architecture of the building and the colors in the Monet paintings Cliffs at Les Petite-Dallas and Sunset at Pourville (2022). The saturation and incorporation of bright colors in those works spoke to me and felt very relevant to the palette I explored in my recent works. Each of my three paintings takes its shape and patterns from different parts of the physical building. Les ombres du jardin (2022) draws on the play of repetitive shadows in the arches surrounding the pool. The shape and composition, including the dark diagonal line, of Lumière mouchetèe dans les arches (2022) comes from the dramatic windows at both ends of the Grand Hall. Finally, the form of Parleterrassedelasalleàmanger (2022) is taken from the view looking out from the Terrace Gallery, the former dining room where the Monet paintings originally hung. It was especially intriguing to think about where these works lived when the space functioned as a home. I referenced the colors of the two Monet paintings in different ways in each work. In Par le terrasse de la salle à manger, the two main rectangular areas’ colors and coordinating heavy lines, reference the two figures in Sunset at Pourville. The dripping orange in that painting is based on the sun in the same work. The speckled dots in Lumière mouchetèe das les arches are a nod to the dabbled paint of the multitude of colors present on Monet’s canvases. Les ombres du jardin takes a looser interpretation of the sense of paired colors Monet used. I hope the viewer feels as inspired by the space and collection as I did and holds on to something that connects with their memories.
MadelineBottom: A. Stratton, (2022), Lumière mouchetée dans les arches (Speckled Light in the Arches), Acrylic on wood MadelineTop: A. Stratton, (2022), Par la terrasse de la salle à manger (Through the Dining Room Terrace), Acrylic and flashe on wood
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White holds a Bachelors in Fine Arts from The George Washington University Corcoran School of Art and Design (2018) and is a graduate of The Duke Ellington School of the Arts High School in Washington, DC. His work has been exhibited at the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, Prince George’s African American Art Museum and Cultural Center,Torpedo Factory |Connect The Dots, Rush Arts Galleries, and Area 405. White was a 2019 Halcyon Arts Lab Cohort 3 Fellow in Residence in Washington, DC.
Lionel Frazier White III is a Washington, DC native, arts educator, and interdisciplinary conceptual artist who works in painting, drawing, wood sculpture, installation, and mixed media collage. White’s work explores themes of forced and coerced labor and its effect on family pathology, erasure, displacement, reassertion, and gentrification.
@black_ebb_artlionelwhiteiii.wixsite.com/lfwhite
LIONEL FRAZIER WHITE III
39 One for the dead (2021) refers to pouring libations or liquor out for deceased relatives, friends, and loved ones after they pass away. The candles and bottles especially reference how Black folks build makeshift, provisional, and temporary memorials. This piece is an ode to that occasion. The assemblage of wood is significant in how wood holds history in its grain, similar to how the body does, and each piece contains its own history. These wood pieces are stand-ins for the lives, legacies, and bodies of those who have gone on, an ode to the practice of rememory.
I am a third and fourth-generation DC native who has a conceptual, socially engaged practice. The themes in my work focus on gentrification, infrastructure, rememory, reassertion, and how they affect long-time DC residents. I communicate these themes through mixed media collage, installation, and performance.
LionelLeft: Frazier White III, one for the dead (2021), Assembled wood, candle wax, and glass bottles; Stephanie Garon, Void I (2022), Drawing of extracted mine cores from Big Hill Mine (Maine) Wabanacki Land
I create collages by painting, cutting, stacking, and altering copies of archived images from family, friends, and historical documents taken in DC. I hold picture parties to share this practice with others. Through my work, I hope to activate memories and the sensory and emotional feelings attached to them. By understanding our relationships to these images and the emotions they trigger, we learn the importance of our memories and how collective memories contextualize history. As we share stories, we find commonalities that express cultural nuances. My practice focuses on how Black bodies navigate and contest the politics of space. For example, in the urban environment, infrastructure, like apartment complexes, causes the nature of community interactions to be different than in the more spaced-out suburbs. I focus on understanding the changing nature of space and maintaining resilience against forces that would erase Black people and their legacy.
Black rememory and particularly Black queer recollections are important because whiteness and patriarchy are anti-historical. They make themselves inherently necessary and neutral. They lack the wherewithal and capacity to consider the implications and impact of their existence; they leave themselves marked as permanent and unexamined but explore everything else. Black memory is so important because it considers subjugated knowledge as a central point in understanding the world. While memory is fleeting, it provides a lasting testimony.Left:LionelFrazier
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White III, one for the dead (2021), Assembled wood, candle wax, and glass bottles
Washington,
This catalogue was produced in conjunction with an exhibition featuring fellows from Hamiltonian Artists and organized by The Kreeger Museum. Unexpected Occurrences The Kreeger Museum Washington, DC June 4th, 2022 - August 27th, 2022 Published in the United States by The Kreeger Museum 2401 Foxhall Road NW Washington, DC 20007 kreegermuseum.org
Maria Luz Bravo, Moving Panoramas (2018), Digital photography, archival inkjet print Stephanie Garon, Void II (2022), Extracted mine cores from Big Hill (Maine) Wabanacki Land
Lily Siegel, Executive Director
Tomora Wright, Fellowship Director
Jonathan Bella, Administrator Image Credits Pages 1-5: Photos by Anne Kim Pages 6, 12: Photo by Greg Staley Page 14: Photo by Anne Kim Page 15: Photo by Greg Staley Page 16: Photo by Anne Kim Page 17: Photos by Amber Eve Anderson Page 20-22: Photos by Greg Staley Page 23-28: Photo by Anne Kim Page 29: Photos courtesy of the artist Page 30: Photo by Anne Kim Page 31: Photo by Greg Staley Page 32: Photo by Anne Kim Page 34: Photo by Greg Staley Page 35: Photo by Anne Kim Pages 38-40: Photos by Greg Staley Image Captions Cover Image: Page 3: Page 4: Page 6: Page 8: Page 12: Joey Enriquez, unrepresented but present (2022), Found brick, license plate, fence, and metal Jason Bulluck, Genotype Query 3 (2019), Western blot artist’s DNA gel electrophoresis-encaustic on paper Amber Eve Anderson, Holes in the Digital Sphere (2015), Printed screenshots Lionel Frazier White III, oneforthedead(2021), Assembled wood, candle wax, and glass bottles
Helen Chason, Director Anna Savino, Designer Hamiltonian Artists 1353 U Street NW DC
20009 hamiltonianartists.org