JUROR STATEMENT
Geometric Spectrum – ALWCA Online Exhibition by Intern Kenaya Howard
Juror Statement
As artists we tend to look and think beyond the limitations that people who are not artists hold on to or comply with. Knowing there are multiple ways to create a project successfully, formulating an idea, and even expressing theme and emotion in work is in itself an art. It is always interesting to know and see how far a person will go to do, create, or imitate the impossible. In this online exhibition I want artists to submit works that defy the limitations of the geometric spectrum. I want artists to consider the geometry of their work and realize within the context of their understanding. The medium used to do this is up to the artist, as long as the artist shows their own version of how geometric shapes relate to each other to create a bigger concept or composition.
Hailing from Chicago, IL. I am a graduating senior at Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical University, majoring in General Art with a concentration in Studio Art, while minoring in Art History. I am currently the exhibitionist intern for the Alabama Women’s Caucus of Art. I am curating an online exhibition for ALWCA entitled Geometric Spectrum and I would like for you to be apart if you choose to do so.
Kenaya Howard
Juror Statement
As artists we tend to look and think beyond the limitations that people who are not artists hold on to or comply with. Knowing there are multiple ways to create a project successfully, formulating an idea, and even expressing theme and emotion in work is in itself an art. It is always interesting to know and see how far a person will go to do, create, or imitate the impossible. In this online exhibition I want artists to submit works that defy the limitations of the geometric spectrum. I want artists to consider the geometry of their work and realize within the context of their understanding. The medium used to do this is up to the artist, as long as the artist shows their own version of how geometric shapes relate to each other to create a bigger concept or composition.
Hailing from Chicago, IL. I am a graduating senior at Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical University, majoring in General Art with a concentration in Studio Art, while minoring in Art History. I am currently the exhibitionist intern for the Alabama Women’s Caucus of Art. I am curating an online exhibition for ALWCA entitled Geometric Spectrum and I would like for you to be apart if you choose to do so.
Kenaya Howard
Piece Titles & Info
Piece titles in order of placement in gallery
Sylvia Bowyer
Millian Pham Lien Giang
Amy McBroom
Sylvia Bowyer
- A Bug End, 2019
- Bottle Bottom Facing, 2019
- Doyouseewhatisee, 2018
Millian Pham Lien Giang
- Goddess Doormat
- Warrior Worrier
Amy McBroom
- Conversions No. 30, 9x12, 2018
- Epiphany No. 18, 16x20, 2019
- Moments No. 16, 11x14, 2018
ARTIST STATEMENTS
Sylvia Bowyer
Artist statement:
I think geometric patterns can signify deterministic relationships and results. These results often satisfy one’s desire for control. A desire that has plagued us since the beginning of our existence and is changing radically with so much of humanity viewing virtual visages in the cloud. As I type this statement, into my latest iPad, I realize wanting these images to convey some ideas about the increased demand for visual stimulation. An increase that is making our relationship to biologic reality more complicated.
Artist Bio:
Education:
MFA 1989 California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
BFA 1980 Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC
Sylvia Bowyer lives in Huntsville, Alabama and makes visual objects. Over the years she has worked as a painting subcontractor, construction coordinator, museum preparator and facilities assistant.
Artist statement:
I think geometric patterns can signify deterministic relationships and results. These results often satisfy one’s desire for control. A desire that has plagued us since the beginning of our existence and is changing radically with so much of humanity viewing virtual visages in the cloud. As I type this statement, into my latest iPad, I realize wanting these images to convey some ideas about the increased demand for visual stimulation. An increase that is making our relationship to biologic reality more complicated.
Artist Bio:
Education:
MFA 1989 California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
BFA 1980 Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC
Sylvia Bowyer lives in Huntsville, Alabama and makes visual objects. Over the years she has worked as a painting subcontractor, construction coordinator, museum preparator and facilities assistant.
Millian Giang Lien Pham
Artist statement: Art Switching Code Switching
The frustration of being partially understood through one language was most present when I tried to convey to my parents complex feelings and ideas using a mishmash of Vietnamese and English. Our half-baked conversations usually devolved into finite conclusions with reinforcements on traditional gender roles and outdated notions of filial piety. My parents, like many immigrant parents, hoped their children would thrive and become successful in the American landscape, but without losing the comfortable traditional roles and notions that my parents’ generation had been raised on.
Straddling multiple cultural codes is the norm that immigrants and children of immigrants experience everyday, and by extension most minority groups. To be successful is to constantly code switch to the appropriate language for the situation, creating a hybrid combination of experiences and mixed emotions. This code switching of the everyday is how I approach art making. Each of my work employs the aesthetic codes of multiple cultures, art medium, and languages, with each of these systems providing its own layer of meaning. I work to convey an idea through a pluralism of perspectives—through the code switching that happens within an artwork and that could be experienced through the work.
In one of my current investigation entitled Abstract Anxiety, some compositions switch from using printed images and hand drawn text to challenge understanding and perception through the legibility of the visual with the written language. Some compositions utilize embroidery with acrylic paint to pit the language of fine-art painting with what has been traditionally seen as lowbrow craftwork. The images and text in this body of work deal with issues of class and Otherness. Images such as durian, jackfruit, rambutan, cashew, and other exotic fruits are placed behind drawn words alluding to class warfare. I’m interested in highly abstracting these words to the point of near illegibility, hiding phrases, and presenting ambiguous visual puzzles—as they were once puzzles when I had to navigate these complex issues. Since the answer to each puzzle is provided in the title of each piece, the work aims to reorient the viewer toward the issue beyond the surface of mere visual elements to seek deeper meaning through the ambiguity of perception.
In my object and space oriented work, I also use a combination of mediums and approaches as a metaphor for the constant code switching of everyday living. As our lives become more globalized and modes of communication evolve to become more inclusive, this constant code switching has started permeating into many corners of our lives. I make these works not simply to start conversation, but also as a mean to convey what cannot be understood in verbal discourse.
Artist Bio:
After trampling in the muddy rice fields of Vietnam as a child then misreading product labels in the United States, Millian Giang Lien Pham went on to receive her BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and her MFA in sculpture from the University of Florida. Pham’s art practice stems from her traumatic childhood memory in Vietnam and the necessary adaptation she had to make in the United States. Her current investigation centers on the micro and macro impact of thoughts and ideas on the body, cultural memory, and invisible inheritance. Her works incorporate sculpture, fiber, video, drawing, collage, and verbal language in larger installations, and have been exhibited nationally and internationally. In Summer 2017, Pham was an I-Park Artist Enclave Fellow for their residency program in East Haddam, CT. In summer 2018, Pham was a fellow for the Hambidge Artist Residency in Rabun Gap, GA and the ACRE residency program in Steuben, WI. This coming year, Pham will participate as a resident artist at the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Labor Residency in June 2020. Pham currently teaches foundations studio art at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Artist statement: Art Switching Code Switching
The frustration of being partially understood through one language was most present when I tried to convey to my parents complex feelings and ideas using a mishmash of Vietnamese and English. Our half-baked conversations usually devolved into finite conclusions with reinforcements on traditional gender roles and outdated notions of filial piety. My parents, like many immigrant parents, hoped their children would thrive and become successful in the American landscape, but without losing the comfortable traditional roles and notions that my parents’ generation had been raised on.
Straddling multiple cultural codes is the norm that immigrants and children of immigrants experience everyday, and by extension most minority groups. To be successful is to constantly code switch to the appropriate language for the situation, creating a hybrid combination of experiences and mixed emotions. This code switching of the everyday is how I approach art making. Each of my work employs the aesthetic codes of multiple cultures, art medium, and languages, with each of these systems providing its own layer of meaning. I work to convey an idea through a pluralism of perspectives—through the code switching that happens within an artwork and that could be experienced through the work.
In one of my current investigation entitled Abstract Anxiety, some compositions switch from using printed images and hand drawn text to challenge understanding and perception through the legibility of the visual with the written language. Some compositions utilize embroidery with acrylic paint to pit the language of fine-art painting with what has been traditionally seen as lowbrow craftwork. The images and text in this body of work deal with issues of class and Otherness. Images such as durian, jackfruit, rambutan, cashew, and other exotic fruits are placed behind drawn words alluding to class warfare. I’m interested in highly abstracting these words to the point of near illegibility, hiding phrases, and presenting ambiguous visual puzzles—as they were once puzzles when I had to navigate these complex issues. Since the answer to each puzzle is provided in the title of each piece, the work aims to reorient the viewer toward the issue beyond the surface of mere visual elements to seek deeper meaning through the ambiguity of perception.
In my object and space oriented work, I also use a combination of mediums and approaches as a metaphor for the constant code switching of everyday living. As our lives become more globalized and modes of communication evolve to become more inclusive, this constant code switching has started permeating into many corners of our lives. I make these works not simply to start conversation, but also as a mean to convey what cannot be understood in verbal discourse.
Artist Bio:
After trampling in the muddy rice fields of Vietnam as a child then misreading product labels in the United States, Millian Giang Lien Pham went on to receive her BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and her MFA in sculpture from the University of Florida. Pham’s art practice stems from her traumatic childhood memory in Vietnam and the necessary adaptation she had to make in the United States. Her current investigation centers on the micro and macro impact of thoughts and ideas on the body, cultural memory, and invisible inheritance. Her works incorporate sculpture, fiber, video, drawing, collage, and verbal language in larger installations, and have been exhibited nationally and internationally. In Summer 2017, Pham was an I-Park Artist Enclave Fellow for their residency program in East Haddam, CT. In summer 2018, Pham was a fellow for the Hambidge Artist Residency in Rabun Gap, GA and the ACRE residency program in Steuben, WI. This coming year, Pham will participate as a resident artist at the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Labor Residency in June 2020. Pham currently teaches foundations studio art at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Amy McBroom
Artist statement:
Merging years of urban living and life in the American South, I explore aspects of urban life, disparity, and the stark reality of beauty and tension in daily relationship. My work uses acrylics to depict the disparate aspects of life, work, movement, structures, relationships, cultures and priorities that a community uses to define itself. Geometric shapes often find their way into my work: squares, rectangles and triangles depicting foundations to build or walls being torn down. Circles are cycles, eternity, and boundless energy. Shapes can overtake, bring order, build or impede. A look at how long-standing norms and abrupt change coexist.
Artist Bio:
After a life as an executive and resident in the District of Columbia for 20 years, Amy McBroom returned home to Huntsville “Rocket City”, Alabama. A hidden treasure where her small children could grow up – and she would pursue a new career in non-profit leadership.
Years later, after a growing nudge from the Creator/Universe, she began painting abstract acrylics in January 2015. That same year, after her first group show, she was juried into the Huntsville Art League at Lowe Mill.
McBroom is currently President of the Alabama Women’s Caucus for Art and her pieces are in private collections throughout the United States and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Recent shows include the Lowe Mill Solo Exhibit “Pursuits”, Kentuck Festival of the Arts, Monte Sano Art Festival, Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, ECHOS at the Wiregrass Museum in Dothan, Alabama Women’s Caucus for Art’s Artist Showcase at Alabama Council for the Arts, and “Bearings” at University of North Alabama.
Artist statement:
Merging years of urban living and life in the American South, I explore aspects of urban life, disparity, and the stark reality of beauty and tension in daily relationship. My work uses acrylics to depict the disparate aspects of life, work, movement, structures, relationships, cultures and priorities that a community uses to define itself. Geometric shapes often find their way into my work: squares, rectangles and triangles depicting foundations to build or walls being torn down. Circles are cycles, eternity, and boundless energy. Shapes can overtake, bring order, build or impede. A look at how long-standing norms and abrupt change coexist.
Artist Bio:
After a life as an executive and resident in the District of Columbia for 20 years, Amy McBroom returned home to Huntsville “Rocket City”, Alabama. A hidden treasure where her small children could grow up – and she would pursue a new career in non-profit leadership.
Years later, after a growing nudge from the Creator/Universe, she began painting abstract acrylics in January 2015. That same year, after her first group show, she was juried into the Huntsville Art League at Lowe Mill.
McBroom is currently President of the Alabama Women’s Caucus for Art and her pieces are in private collections throughout the United States and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Recent shows include the Lowe Mill Solo Exhibit “Pursuits”, Kentuck Festival of the Arts, Monte Sano Art Festival, Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, ECHOS at the Wiregrass Museum in Dothan, Alabama Women’s Caucus for Art’s Artist Showcase at Alabama Council for the Arts, and “Bearings” at University of North Alabama.