Stories We Tell Ourselves at Wrong Gallery in Marfa

I'm thrilled to have work included in Stories We Tell Ourselves, an upcoming show with my talented Hartford MFA cohort curated by Ashlyn Davis, the Executive Director of Houston Center for Photography. The show opens at Wrong Gallery in Marfa, Texas on September 28th, and includes the work of Rita Baunok, Ben Brody, Charlie Byrne, Zach Callahan, Garrett Grove, Kelly Lynn James, Matthew Genitempo, Kevin Kunstadt, Emma Phillips, Tamara Reynolds, Andrew Waits and myself. The show will be on display through October 10th, 2018.

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Lenscratch

This past January I began writing for Lenscratch, beginning with an interview of friend and former Hartford-classmate Matthew Genitempo. More recently, I featured Brooklyn-based photographer Melissa Spitz, who has been photographing her mentally ill mother for nearly a decade. 

A New Nothing

After years of scouring the pages of Ben Alper & Nat Ward's A New Nothing for inspiration, I am thrilled to share work on the site with my friend Matthew Genitempo. A New Nothing hosts a series of image-based online conversations between two artists. Conversations evolve in real time, and artists react to the previous image of their collaborator. Here is a sampling of our in-progress conversation.

MFA!

After two and half years of constant travel, rollercoaster emotions, profound uncomfortableness, and wonderful mentorship, I am thrilled to have graduated from University of Hartford's Limited-Residency MFA in Photography. Humble Art's Foundation and The Heavy Collective wrote some kind words about our thesis show at Hartford Art School's Joseloff Gallery.

Bombay Beach at Glass Box Gallery

I recently showed Bombay Beach in its entirety in a solo show at Seattle's Glass Box Gallery. The show included photographs, interviews with people I met on the sea, and gathered artifacts from the region.

// ROACH MOTEL & Vanguard Seattle //

Here is an interview I did with ROACH MOTEL on the series, and here is a review of the show in Vanguard Seattle.

// OLD & Aint Bad //

I was also thrilled to make the cover of Brazilian Magazine OLD's 50th Issue, which also included an interview and 25 images of Bombay Beach which is viewable here. More recently, I was complimented to be featured in one of my favorite publications, Aint Bad.

New Year, New Work

It has been a wild year, mixed with turbulence, travel, and life changes across the board. I moved to LA in August and embraced food trucks and warm weather, travelled to Switzerland for a close friend's wedding, and returned to the Salton Sea to further investigate the place that intrigues me most in this world. 

Here are four new images that serve as an amuse-bouche of what is to come soon. Happy New Year.

Violet Strays

I had the incredible opportunity to show work from Bombay Beach on Violet Strays, a temporal art installation website that runs shows for fourteen-day periods, after which they disappear completely. I created unique content for the first twelve days of the show.

This was was a wonderful challenge, and pushed me to expand the project beyond the medium of photography. I conducted interviews with portrait subjects, used sound recordings from my shooting trips, and found bizarre YouTube videos from the area, then placed this media alongside my photographs in each daily post to allow viewers a more intimate experience with the project.

Here is a post from day one with the lovely Miss Aqua:

Images in ARCADE's Cover Story

I am thrilled to have work published in this month's issue of Arcade alongside Charles Mudede's cover story, After Growth: Rethinking the Narrative of Modernization. The full article is viewable here.

Things have been quiet for quite a while as I've spent the past six months applying to MFA programs in photography, and have therefore been living under a rock. I am in the process of traveling between Seattle, San Francisco & LA looking at potential programs, and will have a final decision within the next month or so.

Despite the silence, a great deal is happening. I have many exciting announcements on the horizon, including a new collaborative portrait project that takes place right here in Seattle. Please stay tuned!

In the meantime, here are a few iphone shots from this winter:

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Holiday Studio Sale

I am hosting a studio sale on Thursday, December 12th from 6 - 9 pm at my home and studio in Seattle. For my address, please send me an email at virginiagwilcox@gmail.com. 

This event is the first opportunity to view the work I created for Sunset Magazine's Idea Town 2013 in Seattle. These pieces capture the color and feel of the Washington coast, from the electric greens found in the Olympic National Rainforest to tall grass on windy beaches. All works will be available for sale at heavily discounted prices. The pieces are beautifully custom framed at 21x26" & 31x37."

I will also be selling a limited edition postcard set including five images from Bombay Beach, my ongoing project documenting Southern California's Salton Sea. All proceeds from this event will directly fund my work on the Salton Sea. Associated costs include 4x5 film, processing, and travel costs. Please join me on December 12th and consider giving the gift of art for the holidays! There will be wine, cookies, and great company. I'd love to see each and every one of you there.

Sunset Magazine

I am thrilled to have been published in Sunset Magazine's October Issue, featuring the Seabrook, Washington Idea Town 2013. I created a new body of work in the beautiful Quinnault Rainforest on Washington's Coast last Spring, which is on display in the Idea Town through October 27th.   Images from this series are viewable here. To see the Idea Town in person, click here.

NEPO 5K Recap

The NEPO 5K was a great success, attracting hundreds of visitors from age zero to approximately age 80. The littlest among them were either repulsed or fascinated by the dead fish, picking them up and throwing them around, or plugging their noses in disgust. My highlight of the day was when a Chinese woman walked by without taking notice of the installation, picked up the dead fish pictured below and stuck it in her purse. I hope her dinner was particularly good that night. 

Kari Champoux took some gorgeous photographs of my Salton Seattle installation:

The sidewalk was littered with dead fish to represent the dramatic fish die off on the Salton Sea. 

Bob at Salvation Mountain mounted onto the wall above the install site. More on Salvation Mountain here.

TV & Sea inspired me to shoot an old television set and place it in the installation, as the shore of the Salton Sea is littered with broken tv's.

Salton Seattle visitor reading about the project.

Photographing NEPO's best dressed groom and groom in front of the installation.

A big thank you goes out to Klara Glosova, Zack Bent, and Sierra Stinson for creating this imaginative event. More images taken by Nica Horvitz, Mack Fisher, Katie Seward and myself are viewable here. 

NEPO 5k Don't Run

Hing Hang Park - NEPO House
Saturday, September 7th, 1 - 5:30 PM, $10

This Saturday I am recreating the Salton Sea in Seattle's International District for the third annual NEPO 5K Don't Run, Seattle's least athletic and most artful event of the year. Salton Seattle will transport NEPO 5k participants to the post-apocalyptic terrain of Southern California’s Salton Sea through imagery and sound. The actual landscape of the Salton Sea is littered with broken-down furniture, smashed tv's, beer cans, dead fish, and off-brand cigarettes. A stretch of sidewalk in Seattle’s International District will be filled with recreated relics from this region. Mural-sized images from Bombay Beach will be pasted onto adjacent walls, offering viewers an escape into this bizarre and weathered pocket of the country. Here are pictures from last year's event.

DETAILS:

The NEPO 5K is an art walk with site specific installations spanning from the International District to North Beacon Hill. This year's event will include visual art and sculptural installations, interactive artworks, poetry readings, sound installations, music and theatrical performances.

SCHEDULE:

1 - 5:30 PM: The art walk begins at Hing Hay Park at Maynard & King in the International District, where participants will be given maps of the art walk. I will be installing at the beginning of the route at 10th & King.

5:30 - 9 PM: Finish line party at NEPO House (1723 S Lander Street) which will include a beer garden, food trucks and performances by Pollens, Iska Dhaaf, DJ Specs Wizard, DJ Able, a slideshow by SLIDELUCK Seattle & more. I hope to see each and every one of you there! All images from Bombay Beach are viewable here.

On Which All Figures Fix't Their Eyes

Tomorrow night  On Which All Figures Fix't Their Eyes opens at Porchlight on Seattle's Capitol Hill. The show includes an array of muted and romantic landscape and portrait work by photographic artists Megumi Shauna Arai, Scott Everett, Canh Solo, Andrew Waits and myself. All work serves as a visual translation of the music of talented local composer Hanna Benn of the band Pollens.

Please join me for an opening party at 1318 E Pike Street on Thursday, August 15th from 6 - 8 pm.  

 

Arboretum Treescape, 2013

Arboretum Treescape, 2013

Seabrook Inspiration

As I count down the days till I return to the coast for Sunset Magazine's Idea Town opening in Seabrook, I feel drawn to moody and picturesque imagery that exudes the feelings of the Washington State peninsula. Here are a few favorites from Pinterest. My work will debut online on August 1st as the show is unveiled live.

Danse Infernale

I am excited to create work for a show curated by my good friend and photographer Megumi Shauna Arai at Porchlight, opening this August. Five other artists and I will take inspiration from Hanna Benn's new symphony, Danse Infernale, an ode to Stravinsky's creation 100 years later. The symphony debuts this Wednesday the 29th at 7 PM at Century Ballroom in Seattle. Even Flory Barnes and DJ Riz will also be performing beautiful sounds. More info here. 

​Photograph by Alec Soth

​Photograph by Alec Soth

Tropical Nostalgia

As Seattle fluctuates between shocks of heat and our usual grey and rain, I can't help but feel nostalgic for trips to tropical places. I took these photographs in Guadalajara, rural Jalisco, and Sayulita last winter on a traditional Wilcox escape-from-Pacific-Northwest-Januaries adventure. Before boarding my flight from Puerto Vallerta back to Seattle, an armed guard in full military garb tried to open my box of exposed 4x5 film. Thank god for chicken scratch Spanish and the powers of persuasion.

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Seabrook Sneak Peek

I made my way out to the Olympic Peninsula this March to shoot a series for Sunset Magazine's Idea Town 2013. I stayed on the ocean, which was veiled by overcast skies and old growth trees, giving me the perfect Pacific Northwest color palette to work with. I explored stretches of rainforest, deforested land, and an Indian reservation full of ramshackle houses where I was chased by wild dogs. This trip expanded my understanding of my home state and its complex mixture of beauty and poverty. 

Here is a sneak peek of the work. More to come upon the project's debut in August in Seabrook, Washington.

Moclips, Washington

Moclips, Washington

Sunset Magazine's Idea Town 2013

I am very excited to announce a collaboration with interior designer Brian Paquette, photographed here. Brian has been selected by Sunset Magazine to design four beautiful homes for their 2013 Idea Town project in Seabrook, Washington. These homes are being built and designed to showcase Sunset's design aesthetic, and will be open to the public August through October of this year. 

Brian has selected me to make a new body of work in the nearby Quinault Rainforest in the Olympic National Park, where I will create a color study exploring both the natural and seemingly unnatural neons and moss greens that pop up in this region of the park.

The final pieces from this project will be displayed in one of the Idea Homes, and will also be included in Sunset's October issue. I am so looking forward to delving into this project and working in an entirely new vein of landscape photography.

Here are some inspiration images as I dream up this new project: 

 

Beth Dow
Beth Dow
Eirik Johnson
Eirik Johnson
Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld