25 - Donna Mintz—Reflections on the Sublime through Storytelling and the Visual Arts / May 11, 2019 by Vivian Liddell

Donna Mintz on her artwork:

They are glass plate negatives— from late 1800s to around 1910 or 12 are the dates that I’ve seen on them— that I got at a flea market in Chelsea New York, in lower Manhattan. … I bought the first one thinking “I don’t know but one day I’m going to do something with this” because It was a forest and I love the scene. And I put gold leaf on the back of them. And they end up being the one object in this whole exhibition that I think captures that exact idea I’m trying to capture—which is that a memory, a moment in time so finite and fleeting has been made permanent. First by the photographer by fixing this image…that was then maybe printed, maybe not. Who knows where the photograph is… cast off and I found 120 years later!? And made into what I think is a beautiful object that has the gravitas of an important memory. To me they’re not— because I don’t know even where they were made. But I’ll say, I just love them.

22 - Corrina Sephora—Turning Midnight dreams into Reality / February 4, 2019 by Vivian Liddell

Corrina Sephora on being persistent:

But I really wanted to work for this old blacksmith guy in Castleberry and he said I'd hire you IF I had this extra work— so come back next week. So, I'd go back every week and I'd say "Hi. I'm back. Do you have some work for me yet? … I'm kind of persistent pretty much and he said ... "Well, you know. Why don't you come back next week and we'll have some work for you." And he said he didn't think that I would ever go away. He thought he was better off just getting some more work and hiring me to come work with him 'cause I clearly wasn't going away. Right? Because I heard a "no" in there somewhere, but mostly I (heard), "Yeah, you're talented. You've got great skills. I'd love to teach you. You'd be helpful in the shop." … IF... I didn't hear that "no." So... I try not to be annoying with that persistence—but maybe it's annoying sometimes—but maybe it works out.

10 - Kelly Kristin Jones—A New(ish) Southerner Expands Ideas of Place Surrounding Civil War Markers / October 29, 2017 by Vivian Liddell

Kelly Kristin Jones on her current series of “counter-memorials”:

I became really determined to find a way to make really beautiful, pastoral even, sorts of portraits—meditations of both persons and place, persons in place. . . . I think ultimately, it’s this interest in kind of flipping the script on urban landscape.

And this newer work takes into account a kind of cultural landscape, and memory and history. . . . For this show, all of the works—all of these “counter-memorials” is kind of what I call them—are at the site of Civil War historical markers that are all over the city. . . . The historical markers in Atlanta, in Georgia, absolutely talk about the Union soldiers, and there are some accountings of histories of federal troops, but Primarily it’s all from this Southern, Confederate perspective. And that’s what I find so interesting.