As an artist, I am interested in change, growth, perception, and imagination. I am fascinated with decontextualization and reconstruction, and the process of art moving fluidly between known and unknown realities.
This series examines backlit skin of fruits and vegetables - common and exotic, fresh and rotting, colorful and muted. I carefully remove the skins to unveil intricate textures, blemishes, colors, and patterns that take on new identities once removed from their original shape.
Skin that turns into a mysterious cavern. Skin that becomes luxurious satin sheets on an elegant bed. Skin that reveals a luminous lightning storm in a dark night sky. Skin that transforms into an underworld pool of solid, liquid, gas and plasma. These organic abstractions invite the viewer into the realm of fantasy - an imagined landscape, a dynamic world that transcends literal boundaries and proposes new narratives.
Abscission
1: the act or process of cutting off; removal
2: the natural separation of flowers, fruit, or leaves from plants
This body of work ruminates on the process of change, a fundamental and inevitable circumstance of life. As my life has gone through a number of exhilarating and devastating changes, this process has been a major theme in my work.
Change has the opportunity to frighten, uplift, and devastate us. There is powerful potential in the unknown. Our perception of change shapes our existence. As leaves and all living beings deteriorate, they undergo physical changes that bring them to maturity — and also, ultimately, to death.
Examining leaves as living beings approaching death creates new visual possibilities. When backlit, irregularities and blight are accentuated. The maze of veins and intricacies on each leaf can guide us down many different paths. The rot and detailed destruction uncover different narratives, some favorable, some detrimental and hostile. The leaves transform into maps of change.
This series confronts the viewer with defamiliarizing the familiar. The images transform into symbols of the cycle of existence—birth, growth, death, and ultimately rebirth. Decomposition sets into motion necessary change. That metamorphosis, whether it mutates into something desirable or formidable is in fact, inevitable. This series is meant to bring forth the viewer’s feelings and personal experiences with change, along with individual interpretations and visions of familiar yet abstract landscapes.
Camden, New Jersey is one of the most dangerous cities in America. For many families, it is the city that they call home. Children grow up amongst extreme violence and murder, and losing relatives (often young relatives), is far too familiar for many of the people of Camden. In this ongoing series, I document the families who are left behind to grieve their loved ones lost to bloodshed. Each family is shown in the dedicated shrine locations that they have created for the loved ones they lost. Some of the shrines are erected and decorated outside where their loved one was murdered, some are planted amongst the masses of crosses outside of City Hall, and some have created ornate shrines in and around their own homes. What these families want people to understand is that their family member was taken from them unnecessarily, and they are left to pick up the pieces after having lost someone they love to the endless and senseless violence in Camden. Since their loved ones cannot be returned to them, they want to be heard, recognized and remembered, and they are desperate for change.
Jawan "Gizzy" Gideon died from a gunshot wound to his head. He was shot from behind while playing cards outside with friends. He was 19 years old.
Alma "Mita" Brito-Reyes died from fatal injuries to her head and neck, having been struck multiple times with a handgun by her soon-to-be ex boyfriend. She was 49 years old.
Shelly Harmon died from gunshot wounds to her neck and arm when she was caught in crossfire, standing with friends in a crowd. She was 18 years old.
Kevin "KK" Miller died from a gunshot wound to his chest while he was out on a first date. He was 19 years old.
Anjanea Williams died from a gunshot wound to her torso. She was an innocent bystander caught in crossfire during a shoot out. She was 20 years old.
Robert "Bino" Carstarphen died from gun shot wounds during a shoot out. He was 27 years old.
Qua'Nyrah Houston died of smoke inhalation while trying to escape a home firebombing incident. She was 15 years old.
Luis Colon died from several gunshot wounds on the front steps of his home. He was 29 years old.
Roberto "Dante" Burgess died from a gunshot wound. He was 31 years old. Damon Frazier died from a gunshot wound to his head. He was 22 years old. Terrell Cropper died from gun shot wounds after an altercation. He was 17 years old. Richard Smith died from multiple gunshot wounds. He was 33 years old.
Joevon Aponte died from multiple gunshot wounds after being attacked by masked men. He was 19 years old.
Quenzell Morris died from multiple gunshot wounds while sitting on an outside stoop with a friend. He was 31 years old. His brother Andre Morris, unable to come to terms with Quenzell's death, committed suicide a month after his brother's murder. Andre was 28 years old.
Anjanea Williams died from a gunshot wound to her torso. She was an innocent bystander caught in crossfire during a shoot out. She was 20 years old.
Demond Jones died from several gunshot wounds unloading groceries from his car. He was 40 years old. Samazie Chambliss died from multiple gunshot wounds after leaving the home of a relative. He was 20 years old.
Rayshine Burks (Kishaun Burks' cousin) died from multiple gunshot wounds to his chest, while sitting in his parked car. He was 24 years old.
Kishaun Burks (Rayshine Burks' cousin) died from multiple gunshot wounds. He was 23 years old.
In Progress...
Installation Sculptor
Author, Screenwriter, Television Producer
Video and Sound Installation Artist
Costume Designer
Composer
Interdisciplinary Artist
Composer
Guitarist
Sculptural, Sound, and Video Installation Artists
When I suddenly lost my father, I wanted time to stand still for a while. I wanted everyone who knew him and loved him to remain in mourning with me for as long as I felt my pain. I soon realized that shortly after his passing, life went on for everyone else. People moved on and continued to live their lives. This wasn’t their father, and that made sense, but it still bothered me. I sometimes felt like I was alone in the world. In a strange way I longed to go back to the moments when time felt like it wasn’t moving forward, and others were still crying with me.
I have always noticed roadside shrines and I realized after my own loss, it seems that the loved ones of these accident victims may want the same thing that I wanted when my father died. Perhaps these people want time to stand still too. They want to remind everyone that the person they loved was here on this earth, and although others have moved on from or maybe never knew the person they loved, they are still lamenting this loss.
I went to the Lakehouse every summer since I was a child, and it was a place like no other. The house had been in my family since the 1950’s, when my grandmother and her brother purchased this fishing cabin and then built on to it, so it could accommodate both of their families for summer vacations with their children. I loved that nothing seemed to ever change there. It always smelled the same. It always looked the same. It always felt the same. It was a place where my family and I go for quiet, rejuvenation, and to be together. We also went there after my father passed to feel a connection with the history of his childhood and his family. At the Lakehouse, I could feel the past, and I could touch it. I could look at an old deck of cards that my father played with, and I could sit on the dock that he sat on, and I could sleep in one of the beds he spent many summers sleeping on. Being there was like going back in time, to a time that came before me, a time that later included me, and a time that will continue to run through me.
The Lakehouse is no longer, but my memories live on in these photographs.
My father passed away suddenly in 2007. Immediately after his death, I was confronted with grief, chaos, and uncertainty as my family began to absorb this new reality. As I witnessed my family’s pain and experienced my own, I felt compelled to turn to my camera, as my own coping mechanism. Being a spiritual person, I started to think about my father’s perspective, wondering how he would see us now, would he feel our heartache, would he be able to lift us up and out of this grief? He was always such a stabilizing force in our family. How would we get through this without him? I kept the camera on a tripod in my parents’ house and as poignant and intense situations presented themselves, as they always do as people try to make sense of this kind of event, I would photograph what was happening, capturing the wrenching moments in our remaining family. Somehow, the camera seemed to keep me grounded and make me better able to cope with the anguish happening around me. In the past, my family had gotten so used to the my camera always being around, so when I began this journey documenting what my father would be seeing from the other side, they ceased to be aware of it. As we all tried to understand our heartbreak, I found my art to be therapeutic and I became more capable of dealing with situations with the camera in my hands.
The mindset that my father was watching over us helped me move through the process of grieving. I found tremendous comfort in the thought that he might actually be working with me and through me gave me strength as I made this final connection with my father through my camera lens.
Since my father’s sudden passing in 2007, my work has revolved around loss and how people come to terms with death and dying. In this series, I explore the loss felt in the Fulitano family, as they reconnect with loved ones who have passed with the help of well-known psychic medium, Traci Bray. I document the struggle that I think every family goes through when they need so desperately to feel as though their loved one has not departed spiritually, even if their physical presence is no longer felt. The anguish and relief permeates the room as Ms. Bray gives this family hope that the people they love still exist, in spirit.
Kate Pollard’s images depict the photographer predominantly within different rooms of the home, but also outside in the broader community. We see this young woman with family, friends, lovers and also alone. But whether alone or within a group, the camera doesn’t capture Ms. Pollard’s engagement, but rather illustrates her observance, deliberation and anxiety.
Ms. Pollard’s series provides an intimate view of a young woman confronted by a myriad of choices in the contemporary world. We’re offered an eloquent visualization of both the excitement of and respect for the richness of her opportunities, and the thoughtfulness and solicitude in choosing among these options. “This Woman’s Movement” further layers this nuanced portrait by also reflecting on the emotionally rich life of marriage, home and children enjoyed by mother and grandmother and the viability of continuing that lineage while pursuing alternatives yearned for by earlier generations.
Her constructed images offer metaphorically rich imagery of a thoughtful woman deeply contemplating her young adult years. By presenting this intimately personal view of her inner thoughts, hopes and anxiety, Ms. Pollard’s work expands to become the signifier for woman of her generation. Like a well crafted film, by offering constructs representative of everyday lives, we suspend disbelief to feel the full emotional statement of her most fantastical image.
text by: Kyle Rosier, 2007