The Hope Narrative: Finding Resilience in Contemporary Photography and Family Photo Archives is the signature exhibition at REFUGE, which redefines the waiting room experience of the Health Hub. Artist Emily Hanako Momohara worked with a team of youth apprentices to make artwork for and about the community at Academy of World Languages and its new adjacent Health Hub. This artwork creates a welcoming, safe, and community-reflective atmosphere for clients and patients in the lobby and hallway areas, with a public component on view in Washington Park.

The inspiration for each of the works comes from interviews and personal artifacts from Academy of World Languages families and Evanston residents. Momohara and the apprentices interviewed families representing the diverse backgrounds and familial structures of future Health Hub clients. Their stories of cultural activities and wellness practices; family photos; and heirlooms are used to create the artworks through collage. There are multiple photo collage pieces representing the interviewed families’ unique stories of how they spent time together, particularly outdoors, which highlight the similarities and connections between families. These pieces are a combination of photography, collage, and textiles specific to the community’s stories. The artworks are for, and inspired by, the community, designed to break down barriers and increase cultural connections.

The Barn (Woman’s Art Club Cultural Center) features a selection of Nancy Ford Cones pictorialist photographs (some of her original prints from various archives, and some digital images) alongside contemporary smartphone photos submitted by the public. The general public is invited to respond and reinterpret Cones’s images by submitting their own smartphone photos. These responsive photos were either inspired by her work, expressed a similar intent, or contrasted “then” and “now.” The best submitted photograph will be selected to complement each Cones photograph, resulting in a paired exhibit of early 20th-century pictorialism and early 21st-century “pixelism.”

Submission Deadline: September 18th, 2018
Submission Information: Photo2Foto_08_finalprospectus.pdf

Featured Artists: Kylee Dhonau, Gillian Fajack, Paul Filipkowski, Abby Graham, Christine Kuhr, Gary Long, L Long, Alleen Manning, Maya Mehlman, Aquila Stoner, Joe Stoner, Kimberly Baer-Walk

New American Stories features photographs made throughout the fall of 2017 and winter of 2018 by clients of the Refugee Resettlement Program operated by Catholic Charities of Southwest Ohio. Each participant engaged in a short educational program under the direction of Prairie to learn about the western tradition of creating family photo albums, basic digital photography, and the possibilities for creating meaningful family portraits and snapshots. Each participant, from countries as distant as Bhutan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Dominican Republic, produced a body of photographs, then selected a set of images to be printed and included in a blank family album provided by Prairie.

One or two images from each participant, along with a short biographical narrative, is shown in New American Stories and included in the accompanying exhibition catalog. The images and albums created by these new Americans create strong family narratives of life in a foreign but promising land. They illuminate the ongoing global refugee crisis, as well as the enduring power of the American dream: freedom and opportunity.

Featured Artists: Yanitza Rosa-Martinez, Amrita Rai, Nandi Rai, Mangali Rai, Bhim Oli, Bhim Magar, Karna Rai, Wilton Compres, Mowazo Bembereza, Christine Bawili

Dancing in the Street is a collaborative project with Camp Washington residents that transforms an empty lot next to Gallery Askew into a life-sized community mural. This sixty-foot-long photograph spans the entire width between two buildings to create an outdoor gallery. Life-size photograms and photographs of children from the neighborhood, captured in the movement of dance, are printed sequentially to create a mural of movement.

Camp Washington is both a residential neighborhood and a vibrant center for visual art with artist studios and arts organizations. This project celebrates both the residential nature of the community, by engaging the neighborhood children in the art making, and the continuing renaissance of artistic activity in the area. Photographic documentation of the art-making and collaborative process is incorporated in the project.

Featured Artist: Natalie M. Mancino

For the first time in their lives, 20 Holmes Middle School students held cameras in their hands. The team at i.imagine worked with students throughout the 2017—2018 school year to teach the art of photography, the fundamentals of exposure, and how to apply those concepts inspired by the work of photographers featured in the FotoFocus Biennial 2018. Through photography walks, sharing family photos, and field trips, students evolved as artists with new perspectives on the world around them. Program founder Shannon Eggleston and teaching assistant Claire Brose empowered students to work with the joys and struggles of being a teenager in today’s world and to connect emotionally, bringing deeper purpose and meaning to each photograph. Holmes Middle School students and their experiences are celebrated uniquely, as each young photographer’s work is printed on a tile and composed into a permanent art mural in Covington, Kentucky, as a symbol of the beauty represented in their neighborhood and its people.

The works created for the REFUGE waiting room and corridors will be displayed publicly to raise awareness about the Health Hub and break down barriers to cultural connection. In partnership with the exhibition at the Health Hub, Emily Hanako Momohara and six ArtWorks Apprentices created photo collages through collaboration with refugee families in the Evanston and Walnut Hills neighborhoods that are on display within the new Health Hub, next to the Academy of World Languages in Evanston. The public component in Washington Park makes the work accessible to a wider audience and opens up conversations about family histories, cultural connections, and our universal similarities.

ARCHIVE [photo] brings together works of photographic and lens-based art that in one way or another, literally or figuratively, represents the concept of archive. As an accumulation of records or the place they are located, archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization’s lifetime and are kept (or presented) to show the function of that person or organization. Manifest’s mission, as a nonprofit entity, is to function as an organizational archive of the artwork and artists’ histories it presents and interacts with. This juried exhibition, along with the other exhibitions on view at Manifest, provides a comparison between photo and non-photo approaches and inspires consideration of the role of visual art in the process of housing, presenting, and preserving primary source information—and of one’s part in the process of interpreting or feeding into the archive.

Featured Artists: Mike Callaghan, Alyse Delaney, Karen Hillier, Jieun Beth Kim, David Knox, Kent Krugh, Isabella La Rocca, William Nourse, Vesna Pavlovic, Crystal Tursich, Jenny Zeller

Also on view: Four additional exhibitions on view during the FotoFocus 2018 Biennial at Manifest Creative Research Gallery. Three solo photography shows and one ARCHIVE (non photo) themed show. The Photo Solo exhibitions will include works by Wes Battoclette, Greg Sand, and Dominic Lippillo.

Mount St. Joseph University’s Student Photographic Society juries this thematic group show comprised of work that addresses the discarded debris of our contemporary society.

Featured Artists: Beth Brann, Buffy Barkley, Cathy McDonald, Cassie Pennington, Chrissy May, Craig Lloyd, George Keller, Grace Whitley Oppihle, Greg Hissett, Hanne Driscoll, Jenny Kathmann, John Ballard, John Griffith, Kathy Oliphant, Kathy Ray, Kurt Grannan, Liz Mason, Mark McCafferty, Marlene Lang, Mary Gilliam, Morgan Garrett, Nate Waspe, Susan Lawrence, Velma Dailey

Brazee Street Studios and Cincinnati Country Day present an exhibit of glass photography in the Brazee Gallery. Higher-level art students at Cincinnati Country Day use unique image-transfer techniques to create fused-glass compositions, blurring the line between these two disparate mediums. These photography students look at their images in a new way, discovering techniques to add depth and conceptual meaning through the addition of glass components.

Featured Artists: TBA