In the early 1900s, artist Paul Thulin‘s great-grandfather settled on an island off the coast of Maine because it resembled his homeland of Sweden. Over a century later, his family returns to the same area, Gray’s Point, each summer.
Throughout his life, Thulin’s great-grandfather shared exquisitely detailed accounts of early settlers at the New England apple orchard; Such characters include a one-legged ship cook, a widowed schoolteacher, and an ingenious Native American blacksmith. The tales were an intricate mix of facts and lore that fueled the imagination and, on occasion, had the power to transform daily floorboard creaks and shadows into enduring ancestral spirits.
Pine Tree Ballads is a poetic memoir, featuring the artist’s daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother as a single protean character (or multiple characters?) vibrating in time, navigating the mysteries and menace of a shared ancestral forest. This deeply personal photographic sequence is part visual narrative of family myths and part origin story. Pine Tree Ballads is fueled by both truth and imagination, which, in many instances are the fundamental ingredients of our personal history. The “docu-literary” structure of this monograph celebrates and fully exploits the duplicitous nature of photography/text to be simultaneously interpreted as both fact and fiction. At the surface, this project explores the emotive, contextual, and material constructs of history, culture, personal identity, memory, and folklore.
Reproduction(s) is a comprehensive taxonomy of contraceptive methods that uses replication and pattern to create wallpaper panels. Turning contraceptives into wallpaper allows for everyday exposure to each method. With repeated exposure comes familiarity and eventually comfort. With comfort comes use and dialogue—dialogue between partners, between parents and children, between schools and students.
Parturition is a photographic archive and written history of obstetric and gynecological tools: their appearance, development, and how they have or have not changed.
Obstetrical and gynecological history is full of contradictions and complications. Medical history has been fraught with racism and sexism—tools were often forcibly tested on the poor, the enslaved, and sex workers. Conversely, without these improved tools, many women would have had to deliver unwanted pregnancies or died in childbirth. On the one hand, male doctors interceded into the female realm of midwifery and delivery; on the other hand, doctors saved the lives of women and infants in delivery.
When I set out to photograph these items in various medical libraries, I expected to find gruesome tools; instead, I often found early forms of implements still in use today such as forceps and speculums. Some were created pre-germ theory and used materials such as leather, wood, horn or ivory. Others more closely resemble and use materials familiar to us today.
By photographing the tools digitally and printing them to replicate twentieth century glass educational slides, I intend to connect historical uses and developments with contemporary tools and practices. This allows us to examine how women's reproductive health and medicine evolved, yet still remains the same.
Ad Nauseam Lyceum is pleased to present Domestic Skin, an exhibition of photographs by Morgan Levy and Anna Ogier-Bloomer, two New York based artists whose portrayal of family is central to their work. Ad Nauseam Lyceum’s first exhibition devoted solely to photography, Domestic Skin addresses the tension between destiny and growth, presented through the lens of two distinct female photographers. Morgan Levy’s portrayal of pre-adolescent girls in paper costumes and placed against a backdrop of her landscape photographs serve as a metaphor for the psychological complexities her subjects face. Anna Ogier-Bloomer’s documentation of her middle class family in Ohio captured over a five-year period illustrates the stark reality and familiarity of loved ones in transition. Together these artists present a story of growing up female, stepping out of what’s comfortable, and whether by idealistic choice or bare necessity, putting on a new persona.
Ad Nauseam Lyceum is an artist run organization committed to showcasing multi-disciplinary work by emerging artists in New York . The group aims to give young artists an opportunity to collaborate, present work, and have a creative dialogue outside the traditional art market. Founded in 2006 by Ryan Frank, Deena Selenow, and Rory Sheridan, the group has hosted previous events at Emphemeroptera Art Space, chashama, EXPLOSIVO! and Studio 717, and has collectively shown the work of over 50 visual and performing artists. Dedicated to blurring the lines between various artistic genres, Ad Nauseam Lyceum is a platform for a new generation of artists working in performance, visual art, and new media.
chashama is a non-profit New York City arts organization with a nine-year history of supporting artists of all genres and experience levels by offering them access to space and major support resources. chashama provides opportunities for artists by transforming vacant real estate into multi-arts complexes and animating them with innovative and challenging art. Through low and no-cost admissions, chashama provides more opportunities for audiences as well as artists.