Virginia L. Montgomery | |
|---|---|
 Virginia L. Montgomery |
Virginia L. Montgomery, also known as VLM, (born 1986) is an American multimedia artist working in video art, sound art, sculpture, performance, and illustration. She has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe at museums, galleries, and film festivals. Her artwork is known for its surrealist qualities, material experimentation, and thematic blending of science, mysticism, metaphysics, and 21st century feminist autobiography. [1]
Montgomery is a neurodivergent individual who was raised in Houston, Texas. [2] She attended the University of Texas at Austin, [3] receiving her undergraduate BFA degree in 2008. She studied sculpture at Yale University and received her graduate MFA degree from Yale in 2016. [4]
Montgomery is an ecofeminist artist whose work utilizes symbolic imagery like circles, holes, and spheres to facilitate unexpected and multi-layered insights about the natural world, gender, technology, the human subconscious, and visual language . [5] [6]
Montgomery describes herself as an artist who “thinks in symbols.” [7] Her artwork is impacted by her parallel creative career of graphic facilitation. [8] For over a decade, Virginia L. Montgomery has worked as a graphic facilitator, mapping concepts in diverse settings ranging from health care conferences to the launch of an app at South by Southwest in Austin. [9]
In her art practice, VLM similarly choreographs symbols and sounds. Recurrent motifs in her short, dreamlike videos include visual images such as dripping honey, butterflies, moths, ponytails, and ASMR-like soundtracks of her recordings of Texas thunderstorms, wind chimes, and dripping water. In contrast to the shorthand legibility of the illustrations VLM creates as a graphic facilitator, her videos invoke multifaceted associations. She describes being drawn to butterflies, for example, because of their historical association with rebirth, but also because of their connection to the “butterfly effect”—the theory that small gestures in the natural world can generate big changes. Whether magnifying the eyespots of a butterfly, the eye of a storm, or the eye of the camera lens, her lexicon of circles, holes, and spheres offer portals into other ways of being and seeing, potential sites of transformation and healing. [7]
Montgomery states in an interview with She/Folk magazine, "[Through my art] I can survey relationships between bodies, hierarchies between objects, genders, sound or forms, and thus allow forth a message to emerge from these intersecting realms of cognitive awareness and sensorial participation. [10] In the exhibition catalog for Crash Test, Curator Nicolas Bourriaud writes, "...Montgomery's works display images atomized by technology: their aim is no longer to represent the world, but to find the points through which it manifests itself and operates, the source from which it draws its morphological power, in other words its capacity to generate forms and to produce effects." [11] She has exhibited at art institutions including the Tate Modern [12] New Museum, [13] Socrates Sculpture Park, [14] Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, [15] Times Square Arts, [16] SculptureCenter, [17] Museum Folkwang, [18] Kunsthal Charlottenborg, [19] La Panacée art centre (a.k.a. MO.CO. PANACÉE), [20] Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, [21] Blanton Museum of Art, [22] Houston Botanic Garden, [23] and Lawndale Art Center. [24] Montgomery has exhibited at galleries including Hesse Flatow Gallery, False Flag Gallery, Meyohas Gallery, and Kling & Bang. In 2017, Montgomery was commissioned by Yale University's Wright Lab to create Portal – a public sculpture memorializing Yale's decommissioned particle accelerator. Portal is on permanent display at Wright Lab Arts in New Haven, Connecticut. [25]
Bella Luna is an experimental art-film depicting a luna moth as it flies between sticks and bells to create a soundscape. In the film repeating circle-themed imagery appears like holes, spheres, eyes and the eye-spots on moth wings. Bella Luna was exhibited at Kling & Bang in Reykjavik, Iceland.
O, Luna is a live-action video and sound artwork depicting the relationship between a luna moth and the artist, Virginia L. Montgomery. The film investigates ecofeminist themes of materiality, metamorphosis, and "atomic consciousness." O Luna references themes from mythology, feminist psychoanalysis, and material physics, such as the "Cosmic Egg" myth, the Grecian "Myth of Psyche," "the Gaze," and the "Coriolis Effect." O Luna features luna moths raised by the artist. The video was created, filmed, edited, and scored by Virginia L. Montgomery. O Luna was exhibited at the Tate Modern, The Contemporary Austin, and Aurora Picture Show.
Butterfly Birth Bed is an experimental video artwork inspired by 'The Butterfly Effect'—the philosophical theorem that any small change in our environment, even the gentle flapping of a butterfly's wings may manifest change. The film documents the emergence of live butterflies over miniature bed containing an image of a hurricane. The video was self-produced and sound-scored by Virginia L. Montgomery (VLM) after her experience enduring Hurricane Harvey. Butterfly Birth Bed was featured inside the Film and Video Gallery of the Blanton Museum, Austin, Texas for the exhibition Day Jobs curated by Veronica Roberts. [9] [8]
The Sky Loop exhibition is a video art installation using a psychoanalytic perspective to explore the artist's firsthand experience of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. [26] The installation interweaves video imagery of hurricanes and butterflies as inspired by the Butterfly Effect theory. The exhibition was commissioned by the Lawndale Art Center of Houston, Texas. [27] Montgomery was interviewed by NPR correspondent Catherine Lu about the Sky Loop video exhibition on KUHT Houston Public Media, 88.7FM radio. [28]
Pony Cocoon is a video artwork depicting a luna moth hatching from a blonde ponytail hair prop. The film conceptually interweaves themes of psychology and entomology. The Pony Cocoon video is recorded in high definition macro camera footage. The film's soundscape is original and constructed from field recordings by the artist. Pony Cocoon was exhibited at False Flag Gallery in 2019. [29]
Honey Moon is a public video artwork that was created for Times Square Arts in New York City. The video depicts the artist's hand holding a small model moon as honey streams over it. The artwork screened in Times Square across many large advertising screens nightly at 11:59PM during the month of February in 2019. Honey Moon was a part of the public arts programming for Midnight Moment. [30] In an interview with Times Square Arts, \Montgomery said of the Honey Moon project, "We live in an age that often feels more unreal than real, in which things seem to move faster than we can perceive them. As an artist, I wanted to do something different; I wanted to create a sculptural film that felt material, soothing, and real." [30] Midnight Moment is the world's largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square with an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million. [30]
Cut Copy Sphinx is a video artwork inspired by the MeToo Movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment. The Cut Copy Sphinx video is a companion piece to the artist's public New York City sculpture, SWORD IN THE SPHINX, that was commissioned by Socrates Sculpture Park for the 2018 Socrates Annual exhibition. [14] The video has been exhibited at the New Museum, [13] New Orleans Film Festival (2019), and the Ann Arbor Film Festival (2019).
The Pony Hotel artwork documents the artist's ponytail prop inside various hotel rooms during her career traveling for Graphic Facilitator work. The video shows the artist as she animates her ponytail like a puppet inside the hotel rooms. The Pony Hotel artwork was part of a video art exhibition series shown at New York City's New Museum in 2019. Curatorial Assistant Kate Weiner wrote that the artworks, including Pony Hotel, "interrogate the relationship between physical and psychic structures." [13] The PONY HOTEL video was presented as a video installation and solo exhibition at Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany in 2019.
The Water Witching video artwork contains archival footages from nature, divination practices, and feminist protest from the 2017 Women's March in Washington D.C. Water Witching thematically explores agency amidst ecological, spiritual, or political adversity. [31] The film's soundscape is composed of field recordings of water, wind, machines, animals, and human protest. Water Witching was commissioned by New York's Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College for the exhibition, "An unbound knot in the wind" curated by Alison Karasyk. [15]
The Marble Ponytail sculptures are hand-carved in Vermont marble. The sculptures were created in 2018 at the historic West Rutland, Vermont marble quarry on an arts fellowship through the Carving Studio & Sculpture Center in West Rutland, Vermont.
The Sword in the Sphinx sculpture features a resin-cast copy of a historical French garden sphinx in the likeness of the 18th century court mistress, Madame de Pompadour, impaled by a steel sword. Writer Wendy Vogel for Art in America magazine noted that the sculpture overturns the masculine bravado of the tales of King Arthur and Oedipus. [32] The sculpture was commissioned by Socrates Sculpture Park of New York City for the 2018 Socrates Annual exhibition. [14]
The Particle Accelerator Memorial Project, commissioned by Wright Laboratory at Yale University, is an art project by Montgomery at the Yale University physics department. The artwork is about the decommission of Wright Lab's linear particle accelerator. Montgomery created a large free-standing public sculpture outside the Yale Physics Department's building entitled, Portal (2017). The sculpture is a 9-ton, 14 ft (8.2 t, 4.3 m) blue monument engineered from the original entrance portal of the linear particle accelerator. Portal is Montgomery's first outdoor monument. It is on permanent display at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Split Sword sculpture is a handmade steel sword. Its shape is inspired by the medieval divination tool known as the Y-rod that was traditionally employed as an alternative means for discovering natural resources such as water, oil, or gold. This process is known as dowsing. The Split Sword artwork has previously been exhibited at Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY [15] and Ramapo College, NJ.
The Head Stone sculpture is made blue memory foam and a 100 lb (45 kg) stone. The Head Stone sculpture has been exhibited at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College [15] and at the Lawndale Art Center. [1]
Nam June Paik was a Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building in 2020, it is the 12th largest art museum in the world based on square feet of gallery space. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 6,000 years of history with approximately 70,000 works from six continents. In 2023, the museum received over 900,000 visitors, making it the 20th most-visited museum in the United States.
Ursula von Rydingsvard is a sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for creating large-scale works influenced by nature, primarily using cedar and other forms of timber.
Lawndale Art Center is a non-profit space for the exhibition of contemporary works of art in all media, based in Houston, Texas, USA, focused on exhibiting work by Houston area artists.
Jack Whitten was an American painter and sculptor. In 2016, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts.
Agnes Denes is a Hungarian-born American conceptual artist based in New York. She is known for works in a wide range of media—from poetry and philosophical writings to extremely detailed drawings, sculptures, and iconic land art works, such as Wheatfield — A Confrontation (1982), a two-acre field of wheat in downtown Manhattan, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, and Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule (1992–96) in Ylöjärvi, Finland. Her work Rice/Tree/Burial with Time Capsule (1968–79) is recognized as one of the earliest examples of ecological art. She lives and works in New York City.
Alyson Shotz is an American sculptor based in Brooklyn, New York. She is known for experiential, large-scale abstract sculptures and installations inspired by nature and scientific concepts, which manipulate light, shadow, space and gravity in order to investigate and complicate perception. Writers suggest her work challenges tenets of monumental, minimalist sculpture—traditionally welded, solid, heavy and static—through its accumulation of common materials in constructions that are often flexible, translucent, reflective, seemingly weightless, and responsive to changing conditions and basic forces. Sculpture critic Lilly Wei wrote, "In Shotz’s realizations, the definition of sculpture becomes increasingly expansive—each project, often in series, testing another proposition, another possibility, another permutation, while ignoring conventional boundaries."
The Houston Alternative Art chronology was originally compiled by Caroline Huber and The Art Guys for the exhibition catalogue No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston, which was published by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) to accompany the group show of the same name. The exhibition was on view at CAMH from May 9-October 4, 2009. No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston was co-curated by Toby Kamps and Meredith Goldsmith and featured projects by twenty-one Houston artists using the city as inspiration, material, and site. This chronology documents Houston's alternative art scene.
Jason Villegas is currently a San Francisco based contemporary artist. He has exhibited across the United States and internationally. Villegas' work utilizes a wide spectrum of mediums including sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, textile, video and performance. He has created his own artistic realm and visual language in which to explore concepts such as globalism, evolution, sexuality, cosmology, and consumerism. Motifs in Villegas' artworks include fashion logos, animal hybrids, weaponry, sales banners, clothing piles, anuses, cosmic debris, taxidermy, bear men, amorphous beasts, religious iconography, and party scenarios.
Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.
Maren Hassinger is an African-American artist and educator whose career spans four decades. Hassinger uses sculpture, film, dance, performance art, and public art to explore the relationship between the natural world and industrial materials. She incorporates everyday materials in her art, like wire rope, plastic bags, branches, dirt, newspaper, garbage, leaves, and cardboard boxes. Hassinger has stated that her work “focuses on elements, or even problems—social and environmental—that we all share, and in which we all have a stake…. I want it to be a humane and humanistic statement about our future together.”
Paul Villinski is an American sculptor best known for his large-scale installations of individual butterflies made from aluminum cans found on the streets on New York City. “A pilot of sailplanes, paragliders and single-engine airplanes, metaphors of flight and soaring often appear in his work. With a lifelong concern for environmental issues, his work frequently re-purposes discarded materials.” He is represented in New York by Morgan Lehman Gallery.
Katie Vida is an American interdisciplinary artist, curator and arts educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for her performance art, installation art, film, and sound art but also known to create paintings and sculptures.
Sigrid Sandström is a Swedish artist and a professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Her work is characterized by graphic abstraction, an embrace of color and difference in scale, and an array of techniques used to apply paint and other materials to canvas, ranging from cloths and rugs, to masking with tape, squeegee-ing and smearing, and collaging. She has also worked in film and video, most notably for her 2005 exhibition Her Black Flags at the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, CA, and in sculpture and installation. Artforum critic Naomi Fry, reviewing a 2007 show at Edward Thorp Gallery, cited the artist's interest in landscape as subject and noted that Sandström "also grapples here with painting’s essential difficulty in the face of the sublime. As the works consistently teeter on the verge of abstraction, the interplay between a more traditional naturalism and geometric fragmentation provides a salient tension."
Meg Webster is an American artist from San Francisco working primarily in sculpture and installation art. While her works span multiple media, she is most well known for her artworks that feature natural elements. She is closely affiliated with Post-Minimalism and the Land Art movement and has been exhibiting her work since 1980.
Torkwase Dyson is an interdisciplinary artist based in Beacon, New York, United States. Dyson describes the themes of her work as "architecture, infrastructure, environmental justice, and abstract drawing." Her work is informed by her own theory of Black Compositional Thought. This working term considers how spatial networks—paths, throughways, water, architecture, and geographies—are composed by Black bodies as a means of exploring potential networks for Black liberation. She is represented by Pace Gallery and Richard Gray Gallery.
Jesse Lott was an American visual artist known for his wire and wood sculptures, papier mâché figures, and collages made from found materials within a style he called "urban frontier art".
Grace Knowlton was an American sculptor and photographer who was known for her outdoor sculptures. Her work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other venues.
Esteban Ramón Pérez is an American artist who produces multi-media paintings and sculptures. His sociopolitical artwork often emphasizes subjective memory, spirituality, and fragmented history. Pérez earned a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2017 and an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, in 2019. Pérez’s work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at Artspace, New Haven, Connecticut; Eastern Connecticut State University Art Gallery, Windham, Connecticut; Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn; James Cohan Gallery, New York; Gamma Galería, Guadalajara, Mexico; Calderón, New York; the Arlington Arts Center, Virginia; Charles Moffett, New York; and Lehmann Maupin, New York. Solo exhibitions include Staniar Gallery, Lexington, Virginia. Pérez was selected for the NXTHVN Fellowship Program and is a 2022 recipient of the Artadia Award. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
James Harithas was an American museum curator, director, and founder.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
