Light Work Artists-in-Residence: 2008

Garie Waltzer
February 2008

Garie Waltzer is dedicating her time at Light Work to finetune her Fugitive Landscape series, featuring exquisitely detailed black-and-white, large-scale images of civic spaces from sites around the world. While these images from public thoroughfares and places are technically microcosmic representations of large scenes—their size, details, and timing allows the viewer a unique window onto the cultural pulse of each site. As each image unfolds a unique place with its own rhythms, people and precedent, they also serve as complex chronologies that point to one another as parts of a single universe. Waltzer is making great use of our Syracuse winter weather to scan high-resolution files of her work in the series, as well as using our large-format Epson printers and staff expertise to test the transition from printing with carbon pigmented inks to Epson inks.

A New York City native, Waltzer holds a BA in Painting and an MFA in Photography from SUNY Buffalo. Her work is exhibited nationally and included in many private, corporate and museum collections. She is now based in Cleveland, OH, where she has developed, chaired and taught in the photography program at Cuyahoga Community College for many years. Waltzer travels often to make her work, as she puts it, "compelled by the sweet chaos of unknown places...recording to remember and understand."  More of her work can be seen at http://www.gariewaltzer.com.

Xaviera Simmons
March 2008

Xaviera Simmons has come to Light Work to work on multiple projects, including a portrait series that feature herself with models she has come into contact with in the Syracuse area. Her portraits are either set in constructed studio settings, or in outdoor field settings, both urban and rural. Xaviera makes powerful and compelling statements that put questions of constructed African-American identities and their relationships to their settings squarely on the shoulders of her viewers. She may not be subtle in her way to engage the viewer in the presence of seemingly past cultural and political histories, but Xaviera is profoundly adept at using recognizable vernacular, as well as acutely executed humor, to drive her explorations in the subjectivity of constructed identities, and her images serve to remind us to examine the present through ideologies thought to be past. Luc Sante expresses this fittingly in his essay about Xaviera for a Real Art Ways project, "Simmons is a historian who knows that things are as much and as little now as they have ever been, and that the proper approach to the past begins within the present moment, as much as the present can be found lurking it the shadows of the past."

Xaviera Simmons is a New York native, holds a BFA in Photography from Bard College, participated in a two-year actor training program with Maggie Flanigan, and held a year-long residency at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She has received numerous awards, fellowships and residencies, from institutions such as The Public Art Fund in New York, NY, the Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, and a Workspace Residency with the Lower Manhattan cultural Council. Her work has been exhibited widely in many solo and group shows, nationally and internationally.

Deana Lawson
March 2008

Deana Lawson joins Light Work for her residency to scan and print large-scale exhibition and portfolio prints, using our Imacon scanners and Epson 9800 printers. She has also taken advantage of her time and new location to connect with Syracuse subjects for portrait shoots that expands on her series involving individuals and families photographed in their homes or the studio. Her work stems from an interest in the "realness" of the family snapshot, but her large-format scale brings a certain grandeur and intensity of detail to the snapshot aesthetic, allowing the viewer a close proximity to comprehending a subject's connection to their external and internal worlds, i.e., family, home, and identity. Lawson positions family members within their home and community as sites ripe with information and self-awareness, allowing psychological explorations of the "lived moment" recorded by her camera.

Lawson holds an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design, and has received numerous awards, such as fellowships with the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and The Photography Institute at Columbia University. Her work has received national recognition, and is exhibited widely, at venues like The Print Center in Philadelphia, PA, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.

John Clark Mayden
April 2008

John Clark Mayden is dedicating his time at Light Work to printing his black-and-white images of city life in Baltimore, MD. Mayden's images capture, in his words, "the realities of black people living in low income cities." His work depicts the wide range of experiences found in inner city life, from good times and joy to drugs, misery, social injustice, and crime. Mayden feels that photographers are put in the unique position to record life as they see it, and that they should maintain the skills of documentation, composition, and printing so that future generations can see accurate pictures of life during a certain time, in a certain place. He has used photography his whole life to address social injustices, and has worked frequently with organizations whose mission is to serve low income communities, families, and children.

Mayden has worked in Baltimore's Law Department for twenty-six years. He obtained his BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore School of Law. His photographs have been exhibited nationwide, and are featured in permanent collections at Baltimore Museum of Art and Ohio Wesleyan University, among others.

Cristina Fraire
April 2008

Argentinean photographer Cristina Fraire will be using her time at Light Work to work with images from her The Austere Life, Shepherds at the End of the Millennium photographic essay. Fraire's images capture mountain shepherd communities that are isolated high in the Cordoba province—communities that do not use electricity or telephones, don't have roads, and depend on sheep as their single economic resource. According to the International Center for Photography, "In the barren and rocky terrain, the ancient connections between generations remained unchanged until urban ways were introduced by tourists and solar-powered televisions. Fraire's pictures reflect this blending of the ancient and new, but also assert the distinctive features of the shepherds' natural landscape." She will use her residency to evaluate the photographs, oral testimonies, and texts for printing and the potential creation of a book dummy.

Fraire's work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions internationally. She studied psychology at Universidad de Buenos Aires and fine arts at the Argentine Society for Fine Arts Artists, then went on to teach fine arts to children. When she discovered photography, she decided to quit teaching to dedicate her life to photography full-time.  

Scott Conarroe
May 2008

Scott Conarroe spent September through December 2007 working on a photographic study of North America's rail infrastructure, and he is dedicating his residency at Light Work to digitally scanning and printing these images. In Conarroe's words, "At this point in history, railroads connecting the settlements and mythic landscapes of this continent exist in various states from development opportunity to stubborn lifeline to artifact." This project has taken him through both urban and rural areas. Conarroe believes that the changes in rail travel over time can be discussed in relation to topics of climate change, globalization, as well as urban sprawl, and that the popularity of rail travel may grow given the difficulties of the current car culture. This project was supported by a Canada Council for the Arts Grant which Conarroe received in 2007.

Conarroe obtained his BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC, and his MFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, NS. His photographs have been exhibited internationally, and his work is featured in the permanent collections at Mt. St. Vincent's University Art Gallery in Halifax, NS; Kitchener/Waterloo Art Gallery in Kitchener, Ontario; and multiple private collections.

Admas Habteslasie
June 2008

London-based artist Admas Habteslasie comes to the Light Work Artist-in-Residence program through Autograph ABP. He plans to use his residency to digitally scan and print images from his series Limbo. This work looks at the East African country of Eritrea, a country that is suspended in limbo between war and peace. Eritrea warred with Ethiopia for thirty years before gaining independence in 1991. Then, in 1998, they entered another war with Ethiopia over the border town of Badme, which both countries claimed to be their own. The war lasted two years, and has since left the people of Eritrea waiting for life to improve. According to Habteslasie, "Transitory states become permanent; empty villas, destroyed old buildings and unfinished new buildings dot the landscape, monuments to the suspension of history. The collision between Eritrea's proud historical narrative and the bleak ennui of the present has produced an obsessive focus on the future. Reconstruction and infrastructure development are energetically driven forward whilst the economy remains essentially shut off from the outside world."

Habteslasie received his MA from the London College of Communication in photojournalism and documentary photography. His photographic projects look at the ideas of identity and history, and reevaluation of our relationship with historical process. Each year Light Work welcomes one Artist-in-Residence selected through Autograph ABP, a charity that works internationally to educate the public about photography, with a particular emphasis on issues of cultural identity and human rights.

Amy Stein
June 2008

Amy Stein plans to use her residency at Light Work to edit and print images, as well as prepare a book dummy, of work from her series Domesticated. The images from Domesticated, based on stories found in newspapers or told between people, depict recreations of both random and intentional interactions between humans and animals. According to Stein, "My photographs explore our paradoxical relationship with the 'wild' and how our conflicting impulses continue to evolve and alter the behavior of both humans and animals. We at once seek connection with the mystery and freedom of the natural world, yet we continually strive to tame the wild around us and compulsively control the wild within our own nature." Images from this series were first exhibited in 2006, and have since been shown nationwide. Her work looks at primal issues such as submission and dominance, or fear and comfort.

Stein received a BS in political science from James Madison University in Virginia; an MS in political science from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and her MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her photographs have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationwide, and she has received numerous awards including a Critical Mass Book Award in 2007. She is currently a professor of photography at Parsons the New School for Design in New York City.

The 2008 Artists-in-Residence include: Garie Waltzer , Xaviera Simmons, Deana Lawson, Cristina Fraire , John Clark Mayden , Scott Conarroe, Admas Habteslasie, Amy Stein, Kelli Connell, Krista Steinke, Lola Flash, Oscar Palacio, Christine Osinski, and Paula Luttringer.

The work by artists who participated in the 2008 Artists-in-Residence program will be showcased in the Light Work Annual (CS147), to be published in summer 2009. The publication will be sent to all 2009 subscribers of Contact Sheet. Back issues of Contact Sheet and the Light Work Annual are available for individual purchase via the Light Work Online Store.

Light Work's Artist-in-Residence Program

Since 1976 over 300 artists have participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program. Each year Light Work invites 12-15 artists to participate in this program. During their month-long residencies each artist is given the opportunity to create new work at our studio facility in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at Syracuse University. Each Artist-in-Residence donates a few examples of their work to Light Work's permanent collection. The Light Work collection currently includes around 2,400 images.

Past Artists-in-Residence | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

How to apply to the Artist-in-Residence program