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VAP2020-Q4 Words and Pictures

A rabbit in the garden: Peter Tresnan

In a recent exchange, I was able to get a sense of the work Peter Tresnan has currently been making and more intimately, a sense of his direction. An artist whose interests revolve around exploring identity politics and allegories, Tresnan’s paintings at once evoke a carefulness and affinity towards simplified visual language in order to […]

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VAP2021-Q4 Words and Pictures

Photographic poetry – Charlotte Ghomeshi.

Charlotte Guirestante Ghomeshi is a visual artist based in Montreal who came of age in the Laurentides, an astonishingly beautiful, wilderness area of the Canadian province of Quebec. That early relationship to the wilderness remains integral in here work both in the attention given to the natural world and her use of themes related to […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

Conjuring Drawings – Terra Keck

Written by Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz. A figure stands in a field, dressed in a scrambled assemblage of snakes. Twigs stick out, as the snakes cover nearly every part of the figure’s body, except for eyes and an orange hat with devilish horns that peek through an opening. The snakes have built a house around the body. […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

Stitching memories of comfort and grief: the work of Jenn Cacciola

Written by Stephanie Eche. I first experienced Jenn Cacciola’s artwork via a Zoom screen during the fall of 2020. Having not seen many friends or family in person for seven months, I almost wept as she shared her inspiration for some of her works: her grandmother. My grandmother taught me how  to sew. My grandmother […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

In a room somewhere with Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz

Written by Terra Keck. In a room somewhere sits the artist Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz. She draws down the shades to spaces inside (her apartment, her mind), and begins to delicately unwrap the edges of her memories. Careful not to crease or take too deep a breath while echoes, hauntings, and dark eyed specters are held static, […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

Untangled storylines and the shape of time in the work of Stephanie Eche.

Written by Jenn Cacciola. Sometimes a ruthlessly reminiscent sound, smell or texture will cause me to pick up and dust off some dated memory and recall how dominant, present, and core to my identity it was at one time. For a moment, the plates of my personal history and of the world’s start to shift, […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

Paintings in the flesh: Karine Guyon

Written by Trevor Kiernander. Karine Guyon’s paintings don’t want you to see them online. Or rather, Karine Guyon’s paintings insist that you see them in the flesh.  Vibrant and vibrating, the paintings change with the slightest movement, and the viewer might find themselves contorting their necks to see where the painting will take them, but […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

Joyful quietude in the paintings of Trevor Kiernander

Written by Karine Guyon. At the dawn of Covid-19, an event we would all rather forget, there were only a few opportunities to get out of the art studio to see the world around, let alone to see art exhibitions. Luckily for me, before the end of last year, I had the opportunity to view […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

The Cracks Within Our Memories: A Visual Analysis of 5 New Works by Raymond Hwang

Written by Anna Berghuis. Raymond Hwang’s new body of work conquers perceived memory, often elaborating on the cracks that exist within our imperfect recollections.  Hwang questions how memory works in relation to family and why we remember certain moments so vividly. We take these memories as truth, bite-sized treasures from the vault in our head. […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

Digital malpractice on the surface of our screens: Anna Berghuis

Written by Raymond Hwang. Encountering Anna Berghuis’s work feels like walking into a mirrored fun house, where not only your features are distorted but your emotional states as well. Colors are stretched, and forms are disjointed with the freedom and vigor you’d expect from a former athlete turned artist. I look at these works and […]

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VAP2021-Q1 Words and Pictures

Sketches in time: an interview with Heather Drayzen

Written by Rose Silberman-Gorn. Rose: Where are you from and where are you currently based? Heather: I’m from San Antonio, Texas and currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Rose: When did you start making art? Heather: I started making art regularly in my junior year of  highschool. I transferred to a fantastic art magnet school that […]