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Photograph by Kamia Williams
"Antonette," 2018, digital print.
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Photograph by Tiona Robinson
"Aubrey, Digital print, 2018.
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Photograph by Paige Wallace
"Donnay," 2018, digital print.
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Photograph by Aubrey Logan
"Domonic," 2018, digital print
If you went up on the Mezzanine level at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis sometime in the last few months, you saw some lovely artwork made by Vashon students. That's because last summer, CAM partnered with the high school on a project-based art curriculum, which is a big deal—Vashon hasn't had art classes in the mix for five years. The high school now has an art teacher, Tim Jennings, who, along with CAM's new School and Community Programs Manager, Miriam Ruiz, is working with 50 sophomores on a series of focused projects with help from local artists, who drop in each quarter to teach students their particular specialty.
Last quarter, the kids worked with artist Tiffany Sutton, a photographer who mostly works in portraiture (check out her gorgeous series, "Girls With Fruit," from a recent show at South City Art Supply). You can see the results starting tonight when "Vashon Through a Lense," an exhibit of portraits shot during Sutton's residency, opens at UrbArts.
Knowing the kids hadn't had access to regular art classes, Sutton says, "motivated me to teach them all I know." That included the basics, as well as some advice on hunting down good cameras at Goodwill—cameras that get donated when someone upgrades and might not be the latest state-of-the-art setup, but are great working equipment that can be used to learn on. She also gave them lots of art history, focusing on African-American photographers that inform her own practice, like Carrie Mae Weems and Gordon Parks. They also tried their hand at landscapes and still life, walking around campus and shooting as a group. (Sutton says she brought in some taxidermy for them to photograph. "They did not take to that!" she laughs.)
Sutton says that every teen is ultra-practiced in the art of the self-portrait (aka the selfie) and has some of the basics down intuitively, thanks to cell phones. So part of her approach was "how to take better selfies, and how to take better pictures of your friends, and how to make a creative choice, and not just snap a picture," She says. She taught them what they were already doing right, showing them "here's how you can better develop it, and turn it into a story. They responded to it very well. I was so pleased with them."
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Photograph by Ahlaya Chavers
"Myangela," 2018, digital print.
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Photograph by Jamal Walters
"Darrien," 2018, digital print.
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Photograph by Daja Williams
"Ryan," digital print, 2018.
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Photograph by Jessika Leatherberry
"Daja," 2018, digital print
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Photograph by Lewis Dickens
"Jayla," 2018, digital print
"There's always a little resistance when you get new people in there, but Tiffany is just such a gregarious person, she won them over very quickly," Ruiz says. And Sutton valiantly rose to another challenge: Vashon has a strict no-phone-in-the-classroom policy. "That made it difficult, because that would have been great to say, 'This is something you’re on constantly anyway, so let’s learn how use it,'" Ruiz says. "We did ask them to take photos outside of class on particular themes, but students who throughout the rest of the year who had been kind of ‘Eh, I’m not sure about this,’ we were able to pull them in with this very easily. Tiffany Sutton’s thesis for the course was 'You’re already doing all of this. Now we’re just talking about it in artistic terms, and I want you to be able to look at this portrait of Beyoncé, and to think about color, lighting tone, posing, and all of that type of stuff.'"
So, Sutton brought in her digital camera, and Ruiz brought in several 35-mm cameras from CAM. "It was really fun getting them to play with cameras other than the ones on their cell phones," Sutton says. "It was so cute. They were asking, how do we make this format work when it’s not in the format of an Instagram or a Facebook post? So that was really interesting. That was a little bit of a challenge, too, because they’d never played with a camera like that before. They’d never had a camera that big. But they took to it!" She also sourced some smaller, pocket-sized digital cameras for them to play with before they tackled the more complicated cameras, just to get them used to using a traditional camera. And she helped them make a connection of how black photographers like Parks or Weems told stories through portraits, and through their environments, how they could do exactly the same thing.
The show at UrbArts won't be a broad survey what the students shot during the quarter—Sutton and Ruiz let the kids that it would be the photographers that shot the most photos both in and out of class, and those who shot the most interesting or compelling work. "We put some some restrictions on it," Sutton says, "because we really wanted the best of the best, and we really wanted them to try their hardest. And they rose to the challenge, if you ask me." They are also going through the process of installation.
"It’s an extra credit opportunity, so they have to physically come to the gallery and set up, so they are giving up some of their evenings to do this," Ruiz says. "But those who chose to do it, it’s going to be a great opportunity for them."
Next quarter, the kids will be working with painter Lizzie Martinez on a mural. In the meantime, check out "Vashon through a Lense" at UrbArts (2600 North 14th) which opens tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. The exhibit runs though May 27. For more information, go to camstl.org.
