January 4 - 29, 2023

Opening Reception: Friday, January 6, 6-8 pm

SOLO 2023 Competition Winners

Juried by Caitlin Julia Rubin, Associate Curator at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University

Garrett Gould: “Edges of the Day”

Anna Leigh Clem: “Tucked into the Garden Bed”

Garrett Gould: “Edges of the Day”

Life can often seem like a contained and predictable, familiar loop. Located on the in corners of our daily life are the moments of respite from the chaos, Food, work, people, rest, dreams, truths. These exist as check points to ground us in our own lived experience.

Garrett brings together materials, craft, and humor to create unique, exaggerated objects that up-end the logic of this cycle. Food that can be played, tools that can be eaten. All of them inviting the viewer to experience in unison, the edges of the day.  ­

Anna Leigh Clem: “Tucked into the Garden Bed”

 Inspired by my childhood garden, which no longer exists physically, I searched to rediscover lost innocence. Using my parents’ present-day garden as my guide, I witnessed the full cycle—from the first spears of growth until their inevitable demise. I took photos of what I saw there, trying to capture the essence of place, and myself in it.

 Entranced by the vibrancy of the summer season, I turned to the anthotype photographic process. Using the flower’s pigment to make light-sensitive emulsions, my garden photographs were impressed upon the botanical distillations by the sun’s rays. The results are like jars of preserves, emphasizing the photograph’s inherent stillness and marked "death" of the subject. This act of collection and preservation initially transformed the garden's passing into something more lasting than a bloom, yet due to the instability of both anthotypes and life alike, became an exercise in acceptance—of petals falling to the ground.

 In this installation from the series, I have combined a selection of photographs, anthotype pigments, altered natural objects, and clay slugs and snails, all sourced from my parents’ garden and surrounding area starting the summer of 2020, when my partner and I stayed with my parents to escape the confines of the city during the COVID-19 lockdown.