Vol. IV: The Body
This photograph shared courtesy of Ariana Gomez
NOTE: Lucy Michell contributed both visual art AND the music for Volume 4, and co-curated contributing artists with Hannah. THANKS SO MUCH, LUCY!
Lucy Michell is an illustrator and musician based out of St.Paul MN. She mainly works in gouache but also enjoys digital illustration and dabbles in paper mache, printmaking and ceramics. She has illustrated two published children’s books entitled “Jack and the Ghost” and “The Moons” both written by the talented musician and writer, Chan Poling. She also has done illustration and design for several small Twin Cities businesses. Lucy has a deep passion for children’s illustrated literature, vintage toys, old wallpaper, and constructing elaborate halloween costumes for her three children.
As a musician, Lucy fronted the band Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles, a 6 piece folk rock group based out of Minneapolis. She is currently the front woman for the New Wave Indie Pop group Little Fevers and her self-titled solo band. She has been on the MN music scene since roughly 2008 and has toured nationally with all of her groups.
“The theme 'The Body' really resonated with me. The two songs I included, Natural Reaction and Baby's Baby's are both in the body realm. Natural Reaction is about how there are things we can’t control with our bodies, our reactions to situations are so deeply rooted inside of us. I remember I wrote this song because I saw a man in a car pumping his fist to some song he was listening to and it just seemed like such a natural reaction to me. I ended up writing that entire tune in half an hour. Baby's Baby's is about a connection between bodies through generations; although our time here on earth is short, we are connected in the physical attributes we pass on. I find that totally fascinating and grounding. When it came to the visual art aspect, I took some inspiration from Maira Kalman’s “Woman Holding Things” series and painted things I hold in my lap on a regular basis in tandem with the inanimate objects that hold me.”
Justin Terlecki lives and works in an artist cooperative in Lowertown, St. Paul, Minnesota, with his partner Eric and their cat Gino. Originally from the old steel industry town of Youngstown, Ohio, Terlecki graduated from Youngstown
State University in 1997 with a BFA in painting and printmaking. He has exhibited his work regularly in the Twin Cities since moving to Minnesota in 1998 and has been exclusively represented by Groveland Gallery since 2011. In 2009, Terlecki received a Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Printmakers through Highpoint Center for Printmaking, which funded a series of prints inspired by his travels to India and Spain.
Working primarily with the figure, Justin enjoys telling stories inspired by memory and personal experiences. Terlecki's work is included in the permanent collection of the McDonough Museum of Art, Minnesota Museum of American Art and many local and national private collections. Besides being a visual artist, Justin also teaches classes on the art of Pysanky, Ukrainian Egg Decorating.
"As I was looking through my images for this music project, I realized the many ways I have portrayed the body. In my work, there are times when the human figure is solitary and can be perceived as lonely or content. Other images portray two figures interacting such as having a physical confrontation, tender moment, or completing a task. I enjoy the ambiguity of the stories conveyed and invite the viewer to make their own conclusions. Besides defining the body as the human figure, I also related it to bodies of water or a body of people like a crowd gathering."
Jaida Grey Eagle is an Oglala Lakota freelance documentary photographer currently located in St. Paul, MN. She is a member of the Women Photograph, Indigenous Photograph, and 400 Years Project.
Jaida researched Native photography as a Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC) Native American Fellow for the recent (2024) celebrated exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts that she co-curated, “In Our Hands: Native Photography From 1890 to Now”.
Jaida Grey Eagle holds her Bachelor of Fine Arts emphasizing Fine Art Photography from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“When asked about my contribution to this project, I wanted to include my series “Winyan” because it encompasses the theme “The Body” in so many ways. It’s a celebration of our bodies, our connection to bodies of land and water, and our bodies' connections to each other.”
Writer Youa Vang is appreciative of all genres of
music — even country. She lives in St. Paul and writes for the Current, MSP Magazine, Mn Artists, and reports on music for MPR. She has interviewed over 500 artists in her time as a journalist—some of those famous (Jeff Bridges, Chris Thile, Aimee Mann, David Lovering, Jeff Daniels) and many of those local to the Twin Cities who are just trying to make it. When not writing about music or attending shows, she can be found working on her standup comedy and cross-stitching mischievous sayings via her artistry with her sister Third Daughter, Restless Daughter while watching The Simpsons.
Youa is currently working on a book centering around the experience of being a Hmong woman.
On 'The Body': "A vessel that we are privileged to have for a short amount of time."
Granville Carroll, a contemporary visual artist and Afrofuturist residing in Phoenix, AZ, delves into the realms of photography and poetry to explore the intricate facets of representation and identity. Through his creative pursuits, Carroll seeks to unravel the multifaceted dimensions of blackness, encompassing spatial blackness, temporal blackness, and spiritual blackness. At the heart of his artistic journey lies an exploration of metaphysics, particularly examining the ontology of self and the cosmos. Carroll's practice shines a spotlight on the boundless imaginative capacities of the human mind. He masterfully weaves narratives and constructs alternate speculative futures and states of existence.
Carroll currently teaches at Arizona State University. He has been awarded Top 50 Critical Mass 2022, 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Photography and 2022 JGS Fellowship for Photography. He was named a 2021 Silver List artist and Project Space Visual Studies Workshop AIR. Carroll earned a BFA in photography from Arizona State University in 2018 and an MFA in photography and related media from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2020.
Granville's work has been shown across the United States and internationally, and has been published through online platforms and printed media such as: Panorama Journal, KJZZ radio in AZ, Fraction Magazine, What Will You Remember, Brink Literary Journal, Lenscratch, Humble Arts Foundation, Black Is Magazine and many others. Carroll’s images have recently appeared in Light and Lens: Thinking About Photography in the Digital Age (Robert Hirsch and Edward Bateman) and There’s Light: Artworks & Conversations Examining Black Masculinity, Identity & Mental Well-Being (Glenn Lutz). In 2022 his first artist book, Dark Matter was published through Visual Studies Workshop Press.
"I have been thinking about the body in many abstract and symbolic ways. Mainly, I have considered the body as a conduit or vessel in which cosmic energy coalesce and form into "solid" matter. The work submitted showcases this through cycles of destruction and creation and how the body is held within this cyclical state. There is a constant transformation within the body and I imagine what this transformation and evolutionary process looks like."
Vanessa C. Vander Weide is a Minneapolis-based photographer and stylist who has a tendency to celebrate the more audacious and eccentric women of the world through her character series, The Gooch Girls. She is also a portrait photographer whose style leans more towards the moodier and bold way of doing things.
Vanessa recently launched her own studio space in Minneapolis, MN and christened it "Misfit Studio". Her work belies her investment in celebrating difference and her considerable portraiture skill set.
"My interpretation of the theme The Body is to celebrate the female form without always having to give everything away: showing just enough to fill in the gaps with imagination; or conversely bearing all in defiance of censorship directed at the female form (and also often exploited by the male gaze)."
Ashley Boman grew up between a lake, some trees, and some toads off a dirt road in rural Minnesota.
She received her degree in Cultural Studies and
Photography from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. During this time, she began playing music and spent the next 10 years as a touring musician in bands Lucy Michelle & the Velvet Lapelles and Little Fevers. In 2013 she moved to NYC to pursue photography and to be near the coast. During the covid lull, she shifted her attention to video and learned editing. She began making comedy shorts from home to hone skills and later started freelance work as a videographer. Ashley directed, edited, and scored her first short film, POLTERPUMP in October 2023.
"This was a hard theme for me to not take literally. I use my body in a lot of my work. As I get older I am thinking more about the fluidity of the body. Our bodies are our vehicles for how we experience the world and our vehicles need maintenance and care. You won't get very far driving on a flat tire. The control we have over our bodies, though, stops at a certain point before our environment, our luck, or fate just takes over. I have spent a lot of my life in vehicles, I've a good deal of my life in a body too.
Having a body means being an animal, using our senses and guts to make informed decisions. Every day we weigh risk by tuning in to these physical dialogues around us without even thinking about it. I think about this a lot because I ride my old Vespa in the city and you have to have what I call "Lizard Brain" ( I don't know why I call it this) to keep yourself safe on the road. I clear my mind driving and just tune in to flashes of brake lights, shadows and noises to tell me what's around the corner. You can make a lot of predictions on what people will do on the road by observing their vehicles and their driving style. It's kind of meditative and primal. Anyhow, I have a real hard time with decision making so tapping into this purely instinctive state where you are just reacting without internal debate is good for my brain to practice. In this state, I feel the most in tune with my body. It's not all that dissimilar to playing music or swimming in the ocean."
Ariana Gomez is a visual artist based in Austin, TX. She spent the last twelve years in New York City working commercially and recently returned home to Austin, to pursue a graduate degree from the University of Texas. This transition has become a catalyst for her most recent ruminations on the concepts of home, family, and identity. Working primarily with photography, text and sound, Gomez’s practice examines our notions of the ‘home’ as myth through reflections on her parent’s relationship to land. Her interest lies in the meeting of this trinity of images, text, and sound and how the three can work together to create an experiential memory-scape of place.
Gomez has exhibited both in the U.S. and internationally, most recently showing at the ICOSA Window Dressing in Austin, TX, sTudio 7 for the Rockaway Artists’ Alliance in Fort Tilden, NY, and for The Print Space Gallery in London, UK. Recent awards include The Hopper Prize Grant, a 2024 University Residency Fellowship from Studios at MASS MoCA, and she was honored to be mentioned as a photographer to watch in Glass Tire’s Best of 2022.
Ariana's work has appeared online and in publications such as The New York Times Opinion, Lux Magazine, PhMuseum, Booooooom, and Ain’t Bad.
Gomez holds a BFA from The Rochester Institute of Technology and is a Diversify Photo Up Next Member. She is currently slated to receive her MFA from the University of Texas in 2024.
"For the past two years I've been working with the concepts of identity, grief and generational loss. I have been personifying my parents through their respective landscapes as a way of creating a living archive and personal memory-scape of place. In thinking about the current theme for Vol. 4, The Body for me is seen through the spiritual ties to a landscape, and the marks we've created, left behind, and found sanctuary within, particularly as it relates to identity of self and the lives we could have lived. Our body as marks on land, binds us as roots to trees. My mother speaks of plants. To her, we are created with roots that snake down into the deep dark earth, inserting themselves like veins into our hearts and into our souls. The body then, is an extension of our souls into the earth."