Art major Ise Henriques Sharp is part of a collective of student artists who have created an avenue for showcasing the arts during the Summers of 2018, 2019, and 2020 through their Static Arts Collective (SAC). During the first two summers, they held in person exhibitions in NYC and the third had to be entirely online because of the pandemic. I have been in regular contact via email with many of our art majors to keep a thread of connection alive in these virtual times and have learned that Ise has been incredibly prolific.
Ise has found these times personally productive and has regularly shared individual works in progress with me since social distancing began. Not long afterwards Ise shared a compilation of both visual and written works on a website designed by the artist and informed me about a virtual exhibition that Ise and peers from SAC were working on. The exhibition includes works by student artists quite literally across the globe and by peer art majors here at Pomona as the call for artworks was spread wide and far via the internet. While the focus is on visual works, written and sound-based works have also been included. The virtual exhibition represents a wellspring of ideas conveyed by young artists living through these times.
The Static Arts Collective exhibition for 2020 went live with a virtual opening reception last Friday evening. I reached out to Ise with a series of questions for the collective to answer regarding their work to keep arts alive in these times of physical distancing. What I have found is that they are doing far more than just sharing artworks鈥攖hey are sharing with and supporting those in need during these challenging times in more ways than I could have imagined.
Tricia Avant
Q&A took place August 7-8, 2020 via email between Tricia Avant and Static Arts Collective (SAC) member Ise Henriques Sharp, who in turn reached out to SAC comrades, Maya Goldberg, Eden Lawson, Sarah Higuchi-Crowell, and Mika Simoncelli.
Questions: Tricia Avant
Answers: SAC members
What are the origins of SAC and can you talk a bit about what kinds of exhibitions you have organized in the past and how they differ from this one online?
Static Arts Collective was officially founded this past spring, by myself and four other student artists at various colleges and universities across the United States. We all grew up in New York City and in the summers of 2018 and 2019 in smaller collaborations myself and other members set up gallery shows in downtown Manhattan. These exhibitions included student鈥檚 audio, written and visual work as a way to connect rising young creatives in our communities. This summer, in light of COVID-19, rather than have an in-person gallery installation we decided to create a virtual opportunity for student artists to showcase their work and connect. We found that through quarantine with limited contact, our peers have explored new mediums and delved into topics to question and comprehend the pandemic, our personal lives, and society that we are both part of but at distance from.
SAC became official when we organized a fundraising variety show for Black Table Arts and The National Bailout Fund after the murder of George Floyd. With college students as our performers and targeted audience it was a success raising $6,000 to split evenly between the organizations. We saw the impact that the arts have as a mode of social change and decided that our past summer galleries could both act to fundraise and provide a platform for young creatives. This year鈥檚 summer quarantine gallery donations will be split evenly between The Soze Agency鈥檚 Artist and Activist Relief Fund and the Black Art Futures Fund.
Who and physically where were the artists who participated in this year's virtual exhibition? How did the call for works go out and did you have a specific focus group in mind for this exhibition?
This year we received the largest and most wide spread array of submissions. We had over one hundred artists coming from thirty-eight different schools around the U.S. and the U.K., ranging from middle school to college. The call for work started in our own communities through our colleges, friends, and past gallery contacts. We targeted college aged students but we were excited to see interest from younger ages in middle and high school. Responses to our open call ranged in medium from visual and performance arts 鈥 including short films, fiber art and sculpture 鈥 to prose, poetry and music.
How did you decide upon the clusters of themes consisting of Home/Play, Community/Change, and Body/Self? Did you arrive at these themes based upon the submissions or were they intended from the start?
Initially we underestimated the pool of work we would receive. In person galleries we had organized tended to receive around forty works, however with a virtual platform and large call we received over 400 pieces from our artists. As a result, we decided to limit our gallery to one piece per artist to include everyone who submitted. In creating a virtual gallery one of our main concerns was how we would encourage viewers to take time with each piece and scroll to see all the works, not just those at the beginning. We landed on creating multiple 鈥渞ooms鈥 or subpages which could allow viewers to revisit the site in their own time to see all the works in an organized and manageable fashion. We wanted to arrange these rooms by themes in order to mix mediums and encourage viewers to explore work they may not have presumed themselves drawn to. As curators we zoomed each day between receiving our submissions and the gallery opening to choose the strongest work from each submission and converse over themes we saw arise. Although many works overlapped in subject we decided to arrange the rooms by Home/Play, Community/Change, and Body/Self through reading artist statements and the pieces themselves.
Can you speak a bit about each of the themes that you selected to frame the works?
In Home/Play we placed work about the setting of home while in quarantine. This included work about daily ritual and finding beauty in the mundane. While some artists located a sense of home in family members, some found it in friends and college dorm rooms. Being stuck at home with unending time led to a lot of works that were imaginative, exploratory and playful. People worked with mediums like finger painting and experimented in techniques that they already knew, like analog photography.
In Community/Change we placed work that addressed the current social and political changes we and our communities are experiencing. We are in a national moment full of collective fury, and also hope. It鈥檚 an amazing time to be coming of age and to be finding our voices as a generation. There were artists in every room on our site that shared anger and grief over the personal and political issues of 2020. In this room, we wanted to highlight artists that explored ways of healing and taking action that were grounded in their communities. Some of the works in this room are about nightlife and past modes of connection to share joy. While social distancing has made physicality difficult to participate in, the fact that we are still able to work together in other ways shows a beautiful resilience.
While artists in Community/Change tended to be looking at the world around them, others artists focused inwards. Other themes that we began to notice in the works were selfhood and identity. During quarantine we were given lots of time to reflect on ourselves, in Body/Self we placed self-portraits and written work which explored vulnerability and resiliency. We hope with this room that viewers are able to feel a sense of connection with the individual. That while each of us may be going through different experiences, we are able to relate on a deeper sense through shared emotion.
How about the playlist? Where did this idea come from in terms of its relationship to the artworks and how essential do you feel it is in terms of understanding the works and/or how we as viewers experience the works?
When curating the rooms, we decided to additionally create a separate tab for the audio submissions. Although the audio is dispersed among the rooms by theme, we didn鈥檛 want the music to disappear among the visuals and we wanted to create a way that viewers could both listen and view simultaneously if they please. Listening to the music while viewing the work is not vital to the gallery experience, though we did want to replicate the feel of our past in-person galleries in which we played musical submissions and student DJ sets while viewers explored the visual work.
What has the response been to the virtual exhibition and do you feel as though you were able to address a greater audience via the Internet than in the gallery setting?
We are incredibly excited by the outpour of responses to the virtual exhibition and the support of donations we have received. Within the first two hours we had already exceeded in-person gallery donations which in the past helped to cover the physical gallery space. Due to our virtual platform we are redirecting those funds to The Soze Agency鈥檚 Artist and Activist Relief Fund and the Black Art Futures Fund. We are excited to watch SAC grow as a virtual platform for emerging creatives and continue to put on events in the future. Additionally, thanks to the 麻豆影视 Senior Thesis Art Show, No Need For Shower Shoes, we were inspired to create a virtual guest book on our site which has been a great method of feedback and encouragement to us and the artists!