UnBound13! Artist Features: V
UNBOUND13!
July 5 – August 3
Join us for a breakdown of our annual juried + invitational photography exhibition. Throughout the exhibition, we’ll share information about our artists and the processes behind their featured pieces.
SUPPORT THE EXHIBITION:
UnBound! is our “non-profit” play we make once a year, raising money which directly supports artists in the exhibition. Works in the show are available for purchase (like a normal exhibition), but friends can also give to the UnBound! Fund, which will be used by the gallery to acquire select works for the growing Candela Collection. One day, this collection will be donated to the permanent collection of a notable arts institution.
This exhibition supports photographers through exposure, but most importantly through collecting. If you purchase a piece, you are directly supporting that artist and adding to your personal collection; if you give to the UnBound! Fund, you are allowing an artist to be acquired for a permanent collection. No matter what, your funds support an UnBound13! artist.
ROSEMARY JESIONOWSKI | RICHMOND, VA/LAKE CHARLES VA
Event Horizon, 2023
Wet Plate Collodion,
8 x 10 inches; 11 x 13 inches,
Framed. Unique.
A Variation in the Timeline, 2023
Wet Plate Collodion,
8 x 10 inches; 11 x 13 inches,
Framed. Unique.
The images presented here are part of a larger body of work titled "All Science is Fiction Until it's Not." These wet plate collodion photographs explore fictional planetary worlds, early discovery, alchemy, and ideas of place and communication.
Rosemary Jesionowski was born in Portland, Oregon. She received her BFA from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and her MFA from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, both with an emphasis in photography. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. most notably in Daegu, South Korea, Chicago, IL, New York City, NY, Los Angeles, CA, Phoenix, AZ, Cleveland, OH, and Richmond, VA. She currently resides between Lake Charles, LA, where she is an active member of the arts community and teaches a variety of courses in Photography as Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at McNeese State University, and Richmond, VA, where her husband and two cats live.
BETH JOHNSTON | SALIDA, CO
Indicator #1, 2023
Reclaimed Walnut Flooring, Beetle Kill Pine, and Expired Land Polaroid,
16 x 16 inches.
Unique.
Indicator #3, 2023
Reclaimed Walnut Flooring, Beetle Kill Pine, and Expired Land Polaroid,
16 x 16 inches.
Unique.
“All of this is infected; we just don’t see it yet.” This is how a local forest service manager described the forest to me as we surveyed the horizon from Monarch Pass, CO. Just a few years later, 90% of these trees have died from a small, native insect named the Spruce Beetle. Beetle Kill: Symptom or Disease? is a public art project commissioned by CU Boulder’s CASE Fellowship that explores the cascading impacts and underlying conditions of beetle kill on Monarch Pass. Through collaboration with CU Boulder ecologists and local forest experts, the resulting artwork translates scientific research and interdisciplinary questions into visual form. While the project explores the impacts of a specific beetle in a specific location in a specific time, it is also an invitation to consider what lies beyond what we currently see.
Additional Information:
The pieces utilizes expired land polaroids, which, due to chemical instability, only develop images 10% of the time. This mirrors the experience of being on Monarch Pass today, where only 10% of the spruce trees remain, creating a visual parallel to the landscape’s transformation.
The frames incorporate wood from a variety of tree species—walnut, oak, and beetle-kill pine—to underscore that this story is not just about the spruce tree. Many of the same underlying conditions of climate change are threatening trees across the country in unique but interconnected ways.
Beth Johnston (she/hers) is a research-based artist working across photography, video, and installation to explore the intersection of ecology and cultural imaginaries. Beth received an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2022 with a self-designed concentration in Nature-Culture Sustainability Studies. She is currently a Colorado Art Science Environment (CASE) Fellow with the University of Colorado-Boulder and the recipient of the 2023 Denis Roussel Fellowship with the Center for Fine Art Photography.
MICHAEL JOSEPH | BOSTON, MA
Nika, 2023
Archival Pigment Print,
12 x 11 inches,
Framed. Edition #1 of 8.
My earliest memories of Provincetown are centered around renting a house for a week with friends. It was a bonding time that contributed to forming an authentic queer identity away from the confines of heteronormative society. My biggest impression was made by the people. I learned about queer culture and history from those I met and my surroundings. Returning over the years, I was inspired to document the vast diversity and multifaceted subculture within the LGBTQ+ community in this space. The “Wild West of the East” is a street portrait series celebrating the people of Provincetown, MA. These Big Shot Polaroid portraits are made mostly in public.
Provincetown is transformative space. It’s a small seaside town with a big history. The tradition of acceptance lies deep. It is a found Neverland where the concept of “play” is encouraged. The conscious self is taken away with the tide. This sense of freedom is palpable. It is creative, sexual, and exploratory. Normal Mailer famously called Provincetown the “Wild West of the East” and described Provincetown as “the last democratic town in America where everyone was absolutely equal.”
Famous for its people-watching, Commercial Street serves as a thoroughfare where drag queens bark, parades crawl, leather men strut, and creatively dressed (or barely dressed at all) are in transit. Historically, among those might be writers, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and artists such Mark Rothko and Franz Kline. Provincetown is criticized as having lost is Bohemian feel or seedy charm. A night out on the town reveals that this is not lost, and it is the people who make Provincetown what it is, not the place itself. A newcomer states “it is a site of connecting to a greater queer history – learning about the wonderful traditions and rituals a community built before me. It’s about a place of exploration of identity, making memories with good friends, and contributing to a place that has allowed me to be more fully alive.”
Michael Joseph is a street portrait and documentary photographer. Raised just outside of New York City, his inspirations are drawn from interactions with strangers on city streets and aims to afford his audience the same experience through his photographs. His portraits are made on the street, often unplanned and up close to allow the viewer to explore the immediate and unseen. Themes throughout his portraiture and projects include identity formation, found family, wanderlust, the human journey, the search for equality and human authenticity. His first monograph, "Lost and Found: A Portrait of American Wanderlust" will be published in Fall, 2023 (Europe) and Spring, 2024 (USA) by Kehrer Verlag.
Michael’s work has been featured on CNN, Vice, The Guardian, Dazed, AnotherMan, Paper Magazine, HUCK, the Advocate, and published in magazines internationally including Elle, Inked, 1814 and SHOTS. He has been exhibited nationally, with solo shows at Daniel Cooney Fine Art (New York, NY) and the Soho Photo Gallery (New York, NY) and the FP3 Gallery (Boston, MA). Group exhibitions include the notable Aperture Gallery (New York, NY), the Getty Images Gallery (London, UK) and the Griffin Museum of Photography (Massachusetts). He has lectured at the International Center of Photography (New York, NY), the Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA), in portraiture classes at the New England School of Photography (Boston, MA) and taught at the Light Factory (Charlotte, NC).
His portraits are held in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX) Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Fort Wayne, Indiana), the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts (Rochester, NH), the Jack Sheer Collection, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga Springs, NY)and private collections. He is a 2023 and 2016 Photolucida Top 50 Photographer, 2020 Photolucida Finalist, and LensCulture Portrait Award Finalist. He is a recipient of the fellowship in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a residency at Twenty Summers (Provincetown, Ma) and a grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation.
KERRY MANSFIELD | NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Tidal Block, 2021
Archival Pigment Print,
26 x 40 inches, Framed.
Edition #1 of 12 + 2AP.
There is a difference between what we see and what we are aware of. My Intertidal project documents the moment of impact when a specific time and place intersect. With each instance new layers of memory are forged like geological strata. By growing conscious of these cumulative underlying memories, we can reveal the unfolding of time. I came to this realization during the past four years when a place changed the core of my being. My life shifted dramatically on the 10-mile edge of a coastline while grave moments of impact imprinted new memories upon me. I took snapshots like breadcrumbs marking my footsteps so I could return to recapture them, but places first seen at low tide were now covered in white water. The locations eluded me. I could not trace the lines of my memory alone back to them, so I began to map them.
Satellite views of the coastline show an indelible landscape but if you walk that same coastal edge with an ant’s perspective, you’ll find the map is always changing. With each return visit I studied water arching over massive cliffs or curving around rocks half buried in sand. Journal pages scrawled while I was perched on cliffs marked days as they passed. Tide pools lapped at the written ink leaving their own imprinted replies. Setting suns burned dark holes into Polaroid film. My shadow lingered on cliffs as my footprints etched more contours into the landscape.
Photographs slowly exposed the depth of our reciprocal new strata while I progressively mapped the interaction of water and my presence along the coastline. Simultaneously the changing tides carved more outlines as waves rose and receded. Years of collected moments passed through shifting sand, rocks and tides. New photographic maps began to form as the lines between the coast and myself slowly merged. I began to question how I could see the years of our lines all at once to form a map of time itself. I wanted to unmask the rocks beneath the water when the tide crested ones I stood upon. I recalled my childhood introduction to art through a 1950’s accordion book titled, The Art of Japanese Woodblock Printing. The first panel showed just the outline of a place. Each fold thereafter stamped one carved wood block layer of color until the completed landscape materialized on the last panel. The wood block print perfectly illustrated how a composition is formed through the layering process.
The outlines of my cherished locations were no different. I realized that instead of blocks color I could fill the contoured pieces with blocks of time. As I returned to the cliff edges again and again, I could peel time apart as cresting waves morphed into splashes of milk or rocks pulled sand around themselves etching newly curved lines. Each visit would become another puzzle piece of the intertidal zones between the tides: underwater at high tide and above water at low tide.
Gradually the years of my photographed locations are being laid bare. By crafting hundreds of images into an outlined picture I manifested the mercurial color of time. The breath of the ebbing and flowing ocean tides changed the landscape, and through it I have changed too. The Intertidal Block print now defines us both by fulfilling my original goal to share a complete experience of a pivotal time and place through our intersecting strata of memories. Nineteen locations are still being photographed awaiting their Intertidal elucidation.
Kerry Mansfield was born in New Jersey in 1974, she graduated with a Bachelor Degree of Photography from UC Berkeley and currently resides in San Francisco, California. For over two decades she’s made a name for herself in the industry with images concentrated on the passage of time and how it affects our perceptions of what we see and experience.
Her pictures have been featured in numerous publications, exhibited globally, and received various accolades from the photography community. Honors include the LensCulture Single Image Award, multiple World Photography Organization, PX3 and IPA awards. A host of press and publications, ranging from the Time Lightbox to the New York Times LensBlog, have featured multiple bodies of work. Kerry’s Expired series monograph, released in spring 2017, was highly received and accompanied by several solo exhibitions in major U.S. cities.
Since 2018 she’s focused intently on the Intertidal Project delving into how memories form over time when a person is impacted by a place. Kerry’s lifelong commitment to document her curated locations for the Intertidal Project continues to deepen her awareness of how environmental change impacts both the person and place as layered memories reveal the passage of time.
TAREK MAWAD | BERLIN / PARIS
Hanna, 2022. Archival Pigment Print from Double Exposure on 6x7 Medium Format Film, 62.2 x 53.8 cm, Framed. Edition #1 of 8.
Olga, 2022. Archival Pigment Print from Double Exposure on 6x7 Medium Format Film, 62.2 x 53.8 cm, Framed. Edition #1 of 8.
Tarek Mawad is an artist, creative director and photographer based between Berlin and Paris. Drawn to anatomy, mythology, art house cinema and the human psyche, he portrays his subjects as modern day archetypes of individual uniqueness, creating the myths of their own idiosyncrasy. Photographing personalities through his lenses as monuments, while simultaneously capturing different shades of their energy, emotions and vulnerability in powerful imagery. His sculpturesque visual identity built on Caravagesque claire-obscure, electrifying contrasts and virtuous use of vibrant colors palettes, the photographer is shaping the subject with light, materials, distinctive sense of stylingand various multidisciplinary techniques such as art or light installations.With his creative background in projection mapping, light installation and 3D universe, he created his signature style in photography with a strong cinematographic feel.Symbolic, conceptual, intentional, monumental and cinematic fashion and fine arts imagery, capturing on film,the remarkable power each person displays.
KEVIN MCCORMICK | RICHMOND, VA
Jared, 2023.
Selenium Toned Gelatin Silver Print,
20 x 24 inches, Framed.
Edition #1 of 5.
"Somewhere the Air is Right" documents the process of touring in a small punk band. It focuses on the people and places encountered while playing mostly do-it-yourself venues across the country. These spaces are defiant in nature and often extremely fragile worlds that burn bright and fast. The lens then turns towards bandmates, creating repeating characters that emerge and develop throughout the story presented. The photo-zine is named after a lyric from an unreleased song, and the zine itself is a part of a larger, ongoing project titled, "I'm Wasting My Life".
Kevin McCormick is a musician and photographer based in Richmond, Virginia. His work documents strange characters and mystical places, turning them into symbols that create meaning within absurd worlds. This fills moments with purpose, urging viewers to notice the beauty of synchronicities in everyday life.
RYAN MITCHELL | SYRACUSE, NY
Self Portrait 1, 2024.
Archival Print, Mixed Media,
4 x 6 inches; 8 x 10 inches, Framed.
Edition #1 of 2.
“Fragments” is an exploration of memory. Culminating into frustration, anger, and violence that leads to the emotional withdrawal and physical stress from service experiences. Within this series are collaged photographs taken deployments; arranged into fragments of dreamlike recollections, a longing for combat and a yearning of self-worth. Of goals never achieved, training for a war that will never see the fruition of experiences. Facing the transitional phase of being thrown out into a world after the military, memories now haunt you with regret and self-doubt of never realizing your full potential to come to terms with seeking out a purpose.
Ryan Mitchell is a New York-based photographer and former military veteran. He has a BFA in Film and Television from Savannah’s College of Art and Design. He is currently a graduate student at Syracuse University pursuing an MFA in Art Photography. His images have been published in various publications such as F-Stop Magazine, Undivided, and Perception. In 2024 his series was a finalist for Hand Magazine’s Ten Years out of Hand Publication. He has had his images exhibited in Praxis Gallery, Blank Wall Gallery in Athens, Atlanta Photography Group, and Light Works.