Elevate at 21c Bentonville

 

All That I Love, site-specific installation of origami beetles folded from photographs. On view in The Hive Lounge.

Joli Livaudais received her BA and MS in Experimental Psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington and her MFA from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana in 2013.  She is currently an Associate Professor and head of the Photography program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Her fine art photography explores both historical photographic processes and contemporary alternative methods, including gum bichromate printing, photo sculpture and installation, and incorporates her interest in both psychology and spirituality. Her artwork was exhibited in the “Paper Routes–Women to Watch 2020” exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, and she was featured as a historical process gum bichromate artist in Christina Anderson’s text on the process, Gum Printing: A Step-By-Step Manual, Highlighting Artists and Their Creative Practice, published in 2016.

“When I was young, my mother taught me that God is love and that violence and destruction are human constructs. Yet when I look around me at the universe, I see a system founded in the deaths of the weak and unfortunate. The wheel of creation grinds endlessly, a ravening machine, terrifyingly pure in its lack of concern. Yet, it is also beautiful, a profoundly synchronized web of vibrating particles.

Using science and spirituality, we attempt to understand these truths. I believe that this struggle to understand defines us as humans. My work is my meditation on these mysteries, but it is also about the search for answers when my flaws guarantee a myopic view of whatever truth I might discern. To exist is to struggle. In my work, this translates as an attention to labor-intensive practice. The patterns, layering, repetition and fragmentation are processes found in nature that are integral to the work and the meditation of creating it.”

Acadia Kandora is a printmaker, educator, & zinester, from the mountains of Appalachia. She holds an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Arkansas and a BFA with concentrations in Graphic Design and Sculpture from Shepherd University. She has been an artist in residence at the Archipelago Artist Residency in Korpo, Finland and a maker in residence at the Scott Family Amazeum. She has exhibited nationally in cities such as Baltimore, MD, Indianapolis, IN, Tulsa, OK, and Kent, OH. Her collaborative Publications have been included in collections such as The Library of Congress, Center for Book Arts in New York City, The Ohio State University’s Riot Grrrl Zine Collection, and The State University of New York New Paltz Zine Library. She currently resides in Arkansas with her cat, teaching printmaking as an Assistant Professor.

“My work is a combination of printed matter, collaborative publication, community projects, and alternative processes that examine our relationship to nature: nature as armor, nature as sanctuary, and the intersection between the imaginary and the concrete. Deep ecology and the theory of indistinguishability and glitch as a mode of disruption inform my conceptual and material explorations. Being present in nature is an essential part of my studio practice where I recharge, observe, document, and collect. My current archive from these excursions contains more than 12,0000 artifacts and includes photographs, drawings, handwritten notes, and found objects. I deconstruct, alter, and collage elements of the archive to create the imagery present in my prints and publications.

The theory of indistinguishability concerns itself with the removal of barriers between the self and the other. I approach Indistinguishability through the merging of my body with nature. This is present in printed works such as Self Portrait (2022) and I’m in a Symbiotic Relationship With My Garden, where patches of lettuce grow out of my body and eyes. Lettuce is specifically used because historically it was thought to be a medicinal herb and alludes to ongoing themes of recovery, resilience, and metamorphosis.

The Terrarium exhibition in particular further explores these ideas as well as themes of protection, the stillness associated with isolation, and the feeling of living inside a fish bowl. Terrariums are typically created inside glass containers holding soil and plants in an environment protected from the outside world. In this work, my themes of indistinguishability and self-narrative are sealed off within the glass vitrine, denying the viewer closer access to the work. A fluorescent glow surrounds the exhibition as paper leaves are frozen in a state of falling; creating an eerie stillness within the exhibition.”

 

Tear’s of Steel: A Hero’s Smile

Maryam Amirvaghefi  received her MFA from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and her BFA from the Sooreh University. Amirvaghefi’s works are mixed media medium of painting, video art, and sculpture pieces. Her work has been included in a number of exhibitions, nationally and internationally, such as Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair 2023; Turkey; The Museum of Art in The University of Southern Mississippi's School of Performing and Visual Arts, Hattiesburg MS; CICA Museum; South Korea; Mey Gallery, LA; Studio 200 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Bavan Gallery, Iran; Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas, City, MO; Aaran Gallery, Iran; Gallery 263, Cambridge, MA; Soo Contemporary, Iran; Walton Art Center, Fayetteville, AR; Etemad Gallery, Iran; Jodee Harris Gallery, Greensburg, PA; Delaware State University, Dover, DE, among many others.