Curatorial Statement:
Photographer Elizabeth Sone thinks deeply about community connections. Sharing in the participatory multi-generational stories of I Remember is an opportunity for Turchin Center visitors to connect with extended communities across North Carolina. The negatives and faded 35mm slides that Stone gathers through donations and then weaves into ethereal sculptural forms create a shared vison which is both specific and anonymous. Her installations include identifiable individuals; at the same time, we see ourselves as part of a collective whole. Memories recede and reemerge. They are bright and fade with time. The precious instances we capture on film are often the only traces of people and places no longer with us. Reminiscing keeps memories vividly alive. Stone will work with photography students from the Department of Art at Appalachian State University to create additional pieces for the installation, bringing Boone into her extended North Carolina reverie.
Elizabeth Stone, The Stars Know Your Name (left) & Steal the Elixir and Run (right)
About the Artist:
Elizabeth Stone is a Montana-based visual artist exploring potent themes of memory and time deeply rooted within the ambiguity of photography. Stone’s work has been exhibited and is held in collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; Cassilhaus, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, Montana; Candela Collection, Richmond, Virginia; Archive 192, New York, New York; and the Nevada Museum of Art Special Collections Library, Reno, Nevada. Fellowships include Cassilhaus, Ucross Foundation, Jentel Arts, Willapa Bay AIR, the National Park Service, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts through the Montana Fellowship award from the LEAW Foundation (2019). Process drives Stone’s work as she continues to push and pull at the edge of what defines and how we see the photograph.
Elizabeth Stone, And Every Stone on the Road Precious
Elizabeth Stone, The Stars Know Your Name (left) & Steal the Elixir and Run (right)
Elizabeth Stone, Gather
Artist Statement
Babies, funerals, graduations, school holiday programs, birthday cakes, cats lying on owners, wilderness adventures, vacations, weddings, friends, laughing, family gatherings, first day of school…the images in these artworks, captured on small frames of photographic film, reveal moments in our lives, slices of time that stir memories and encourage reflection.
The I Remember Project is a participatory multi-generational community engagement project inspired by Joe Brainard’s book, I Remember. It was conceived during the imposed isolation of the pandemic in 2020 and created during an artist-in-residency at Cassilhaus in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in October 2021.
These artworks incorporate thousands of photographic negatives and slides that were collected from generous community members in Central North Carolina communities.
Negatives were found gathering dust in old wooden crates in a garage, in old notebooks filled with personal history, in boxes under beds, tucked away in basement storage, and piled up in envelopes in a desk drawer. Negatives and prints were also donated by present day students working in the wet darkroom, embracing the tactile process of traditional photography as an alternative means of expression.
While binding these materials together into the final artworks, I thought a lot about what defines a community and how we gather in meaningful ways. The sharing of stories is often at the core of human connection and photographs can remind us that our shared memories greatly outweigh our differences. Sparked by the power of family photographs, this project has become an opportunity for these communities to participate, pause and reconsider the many perspectives of a communal experience and celebrate the impact of art in our lives.
Elizabeth Stone
Additional resources
-
Website: https://elizabethstone.com/
Instagram: @elizabethstonevisualartist