In Conversation: Rodney Ewing, Brooks Fletcher, and Adrian White

Moderated by Elena Gross

Tuesday, February 2, 2021
6:00 - 7:30 PM PST

On Tuesday, February 2nd we were excited to host a conversation between artists Rodney Ewing, Brooks Fletcher, and Adrian White, moderated by Elena Gross. Each artist shared their body of work and together discussed how they use art to preserve and give insight to the Black experience.

RODNEY EWING
Rodney Ewing’s drawings, installations, and mixed media works focus on his need to intersect body and place, memory and fact to re-examine human histories, cultural conditions, and events. With his work he is pursuing a narrative that requires us to be present and intimate. His work has been exhibited at Euphrat Museum of Art, Cupertino, CA; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; and in San Francisco, CA at Root Division, Jack Fischer Gallery, Museum of the African Diaspora, Nancy Toomey Fine Art, Alter Space Gallery, Southern Exposure Gallery, Ictus Projects, and SFMOMA. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at Recology and the De Young Museum of Fine Arts both in San Francisco, as well as Djerassi in Woodside, California, Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, California, and Bemis Center for the Arts, Omaha, Nebraska. Ewing received his BFA in Printmaking from Louisiana State University and his MFA in Printmaking West Virginia University. His work is currently on view at SFMOMA as part of the exhibition Close To Home: Creativity in Crisis.

BROOKS FLETCHER
Brooks Fletcher is a photographer and visual artist based in Oakland, California. After receiving a BA in Communication Studies from California State University, Sacramento, he served 11 years on active duty in the US Army as a photojournalist, specialized in public affairs and strategic and mass communication. Following his military service, the Oakland-native earned an MFA in Photography from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He uses color reversal film and backlit frames to examine the nature of photographs, the lived experience, and the medium's capacity to challenge attitude and perception. The result is a philosophically-charged body of work that not only extends an alternate approach toward photography in an age of digital reproduction but showcases the importance and relevance of photographic education in modern society.

ADRIAN WHITE
Los Angeles based photographer Adrian White creates portraiture primarily dealing with memory, trauma and history from the perspective of people of the African diaspora.  His goal is to connect with his ancestors by remembering the past, documenting the present and imaging a utopian future.  White was born and raised in the small tobacco and cotton town of Stantonsburg, NC.  He studied at North Carolina Central University (BA, 2002), Brooks Institute of Photography  (BFA 2014) and Parsons School of Design (MFA in Photography and Related Media 2019).

ELENA GROSS
Elena Gross (she/they) is an independent writer and culture critic living in Oakland, CA. She received an MA in Visual & Critical Studies from the California College of the Arts in 2016, and her BA in Art History and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2012. She specializes in representations of identity in fine art, photography, and popular media. Elena was formerly the creator and co-host of the arts & visual culture podcast what are you looking at? published by Art Practical. Her research has been centered around conceptual and material abstractions of the body in the work of Black modern and contemporary artists. She has presented her writing and research at institutions and conferences across the U.S., including Nook Gallery, Southern Exposure, KADIST, Harvard College, YBCA, California College of the Arts, and the GLBT History Museum. In 2018, she collaborated with the artist Leila Weefur on the publication Between Beauty & Horror (Sming Sming Books). The two performed a live adaptation of their work at The Lab, San Francisco. Her most recent writing can be found in the publication This Is Not A Gun (Sming Sming Books / Candor Arts). 

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