PENUMBRA:
CORRIDOR OF AMBIENCE
Recent Works by Ya La'ford
Tempus Projects
March 23 –May 3, 2019
Opening :: 7–9PM, Saturday, March 23, 2019
Penumbra /pəˈnəmbrə/ (from the Latin word paene "almost, nearly") is the region in which only a portion of the light source is obscured by the occluding body.
Penumbra: Corridor of Ambience is an exhibition featuring a transformed and illuminated space clad with geometric-laden layers from installation artist Ya La’Ford. The upcoming exhibit opens March 23, 2019 with an artist reception and remains on view through May 3, 2019.
Penumbra: Corridor of Ambience is the 6th and most significant Central Florida based site-specific installation, featuring geometric aerial sculptures representing La’ford’s focus on how light ripples in space, the metaphysics of illumination, and the emotive responses to sound and time. Inspired by sacred spaces, patterns and place, La’ford’s installation invites viewers to activate both space and senses through a whimsical array of intersecting geometric forms. Fascinated by paths of light, La’ford’s lined encased environment is an echo of her interests in a concept she coined as geometric-lineage; a parallel sense that each line exists as a compatible path that defines each individual’s intersected human experience.
As a result, the Penumbra’s linear trajectories, are simultaneously designed to orchestrate a sense of curious investigation into positive and negative spaces, the power of choice and decision and act as a reflective and immersive experience. The installation design suspends light and geometric patterns obscuring light through sculpted tracks to emit interwoven lines that will become shadows that cover the gallery walls, floor and ceiling and even the gallery visitors. With Penumbra, no clear boundary or separation exists; your moving body changes the nature of the pattern as we walk freely through the penetrable silhouette.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ya Levy-La’ford is an artist, educator and foremost a transporter working between the visual and our community through a wide range of mediums including paint, sculpture, installation, video and sound. La’ford is known for her site-specific installations of her bold, geometric paintings to explore themes of transformation and transcendence. She builds each work with a unique vocabulary of intersecting lines and gestural repetition that create distinctive visual impact. Her labyrinth patterns are both an exploration of self and place, as well as a reflection of her Jamaican background. Complex yet minimal, La’ford’s work emphasizes contrasts between light and dark, positive and negative space and draw connections between interconnectivity and space.
Her practice seeks to express a living partnership between people, our relationship to space and the natural world around us expressed through multi-dimensional objects that parallel the political, cultural and historical impacts of violence and destruction, perpetrated through the use of firearms. Through the exploration of linear and cyclical geometric labyrinths, visitors are challenged to juxtapose personal vs conventional thinking revolving guns, engaging in difficult conversations on a topic across seemingly impossible divides. Reaction and social consciousness are the tools of the viewer to experience art as a vehicle of change, healing and to unite people under a banner of transformed national identity on gun violence.
La’ford has exhibited her work in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and had been recipient of numerous awards, including most recently the Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow in Washington DC. She earned her BFA Cum Laude in Painting at Florida State University; a JD from Levin College of Law, University of Florida; and received her MFA with Honors in Interdisciplinary Art from the Art Institute, Boston.
CORRIDOR OF AMBIENCE
Recent Works by Ya La'ford
Tempus Projects
March 23 –May 3, 2019
Opening :: 7–9PM, Saturday, March 23, 2019
Penumbra /pəˈnəmbrə/ (from the Latin word paene "almost, nearly") is the region in which only a portion of the light source is obscured by the occluding body.
Penumbra: Corridor of Ambience is an exhibition featuring a transformed and illuminated space clad with geometric-laden layers from installation artist Ya La’Ford. The upcoming exhibit opens March 23, 2019 with an artist reception and remains on view through May 3, 2019.
Penumbra: Corridor of Ambience is the 6th and most significant Central Florida based site-specific installation, featuring geometric aerial sculptures representing La’ford’s focus on how light ripples in space, the metaphysics of illumination, and the emotive responses to sound and time. Inspired by sacred spaces, patterns and place, La’ford’s installation invites viewers to activate both space and senses through a whimsical array of intersecting geometric forms. Fascinated by paths of light, La’ford’s lined encased environment is an echo of her interests in a concept she coined as geometric-lineage; a parallel sense that each line exists as a compatible path that defines each individual’s intersected human experience.
As a result, the Penumbra’s linear trajectories, are simultaneously designed to orchestrate a sense of curious investigation into positive and negative spaces, the power of choice and decision and act as a reflective and immersive experience. The installation design suspends light and geometric patterns obscuring light through sculpted tracks to emit interwoven lines that will become shadows that cover the gallery walls, floor and ceiling and even the gallery visitors. With Penumbra, no clear boundary or separation exists; your moving body changes the nature of the pattern as we walk freely through the penetrable silhouette.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ya Levy-La’ford is an artist, educator and foremost a transporter working between the visual and our community through a wide range of mediums including paint, sculpture, installation, video and sound. La’ford is known for her site-specific installations of her bold, geometric paintings to explore themes of transformation and transcendence. She builds each work with a unique vocabulary of intersecting lines and gestural repetition that create distinctive visual impact. Her labyrinth patterns are both an exploration of self and place, as well as a reflection of her Jamaican background. Complex yet minimal, La’ford’s work emphasizes contrasts between light and dark, positive and negative space and draw connections between interconnectivity and space.
Her practice seeks to express a living partnership between people, our relationship to space and the natural world around us expressed through multi-dimensional objects that parallel the political, cultural and historical impacts of violence and destruction, perpetrated through the use of firearms. Through the exploration of linear and cyclical geometric labyrinths, visitors are challenged to juxtapose personal vs conventional thinking revolving guns, engaging in difficult conversations on a topic across seemingly impossible divides. Reaction and social consciousness are the tools of the viewer to experience art as a vehicle of change, healing and to unite people under a banner of transformed national identity on gun violence.
La’ford has exhibited her work in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and had been recipient of numerous awards, including most recently the Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow in Washington DC. She earned her BFA Cum Laude in Painting at Florida State University; a JD from Levin College of Law, University of Florida; and received her MFA with Honors in Interdisciplinary Art from the Art Institute, Boston.
OH! MARY MARY MARY
Solo Exhibition by Will Douglas including collaborations with Matthew Drennan Wicks
April 5 – May 6, 2019
Tempus Project Space
OPENING RECEPTION :: 7–9pm, Friday, April 5, 2019
Tempus Projects presents Oh! Mary Mary Mary, a solo exhibition by Tampa based artist Will Douglas. Oh! Mary Mary Mary is an exhibition of works by Will Douglas made in response to the ways in which spontaneous screen-based collage influences and complicates our perception of the 3-dimensional world. In these works, religious imagery and ritual objects serve as a vehicle to speak about the construction of an experience economy at the intersection of consumerism, masculinity and devotion. Oh! Mary Mary Mary features sculptural collaborations with Matthew Drennan Wicks which allow the photographic language to speak, not only through the lens but also through the object. With these works the photograph returns to a form that references the history of western functional object making.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Will Douglas studied at VCUarts where he received a BFA in Photography and Film in 2012. While studying at VCU, he was a recipient of a VMFA undergraduate fellowship. In 2015 he was included in the Review Santa Fe 100 and was named as a Top 50 Emerging Talent by LensCulture. Since then, he has been included in various important exhibitions including Skyway: A Contemporary Collaboration at The Tampa Museum of Art. He was recently featured in the Annuale X at the Light Factory in Charlotte, NC. In 2018, he received his MFA in Studio Art at the University of South Florida where he was a graduate fellow. He has also received a Lenscratch Student Prize and an SPE Student Award for Innovations in Imaging. In March of 2019 Douglas released FLAT PICTURES (YOU CAN FEEL) published by Aint-Bad of Savannah, GA. This summer he will exhibit at Gravy Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, and he was invited to participate in the PhotoLucida portfolio review. Douglas is currently an adjunct faculty of art at the University of South Florida, the University of Tampa, and Hillsborough Community College. He also works as a fabricator at Live Work Studios, Tampa.
willwdoug.com
WHAT
Exhibition / First Friday Seminole Heights
WHEN
Friday, April 5, 7–9pm
Exhibition: April 5–May 6, 2019
WHERE
TEMPUS PROJECTS PROJECT SPACE
4636 N Florida Avenue, Tampa, Florida 33603
Solo Exhibition by Will Douglas including collaborations with Matthew Drennan Wicks
April 5 – May 6, 2019
Tempus Project Space
OPENING RECEPTION :: 7–9pm, Friday, April 5, 2019
Tempus Projects presents Oh! Mary Mary Mary, a solo exhibition by Tampa based artist Will Douglas. Oh! Mary Mary Mary is an exhibition of works by Will Douglas made in response to the ways in which spontaneous screen-based collage influences and complicates our perception of the 3-dimensional world. In these works, religious imagery and ritual objects serve as a vehicle to speak about the construction of an experience economy at the intersection of consumerism, masculinity and devotion. Oh! Mary Mary Mary features sculptural collaborations with Matthew Drennan Wicks which allow the photographic language to speak, not only through the lens but also through the object. With these works the photograph returns to a form that references the history of western functional object making.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Will Douglas studied at VCUarts where he received a BFA in Photography and Film in 2012. While studying at VCU, he was a recipient of a VMFA undergraduate fellowship. In 2015 he was included in the Review Santa Fe 100 and was named as a Top 50 Emerging Talent by LensCulture. Since then, he has been included in various important exhibitions including Skyway: A Contemporary Collaboration at The Tampa Museum of Art. He was recently featured in the Annuale X at the Light Factory in Charlotte, NC. In 2018, he received his MFA in Studio Art at the University of South Florida where he was a graduate fellow. He has also received a Lenscratch Student Prize and an SPE Student Award for Innovations in Imaging. In March of 2019 Douglas released FLAT PICTURES (YOU CAN FEEL) published by Aint-Bad of Savannah, GA. This summer he will exhibit at Gravy Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, and he was invited to participate in the PhotoLucida portfolio review. Douglas is currently an adjunct faculty of art at the University of South Florida, the University of Tampa, and Hillsborough Community College. He also works as a fabricator at Live Work Studios, Tampa.
willwdoug.com
WHAT
Exhibition / First Friday Seminole Heights
WHEN
Friday, April 5, 7–9pm
Exhibition: April 5–May 6, 2019
WHERE
TEMPUS PROJECTS PROJECT SPACE
4636 N Florida Avenue, Tampa, Florida 33603
