{"id":65786,"date":"2020-05-12T09:52:55","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T13:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=65786"},"modified":"2020-05-12T13:13:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T17:13:33","slug":"faculty-focus-amy-friend-on-the-art-of-visual-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2020\/05\/faculty-focus-amy-friend-on-the-art-of-visual-storytelling\/","title":{"rendered":"FACULTY FOCUS: Amy Friend on the art of visual storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: Faculty Focus is a monthly series that highlights faculty whose compelling passions, innovative ideas and various areas of expertise help weave together the fabric of Brock University\u2019s vibrant community. For more from the series, click here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not often that Amy Friend goes out and photographs what she calls \u2018the real world.\u2019<\/p>\n

Instead, the associate professor in the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts works hands-on to interrogate a medium, experimenting with both digital and analogue images.<\/p>\n

One of Friend’s signature styles is hand-manipulating vintage photographs in a way that rescues and revives them, exploring what’s visible and what isn’t, such as in her series\u00a0Dare alla Luce<\/em>. She likes to think photography as a material that is alive with possibility.<\/p>\n

Her work has been selected three times as one of the top 50 photographs in the juried Critical Mass International Photography Competition, and she\u2019s exhibited in more than a dozen countries, including Spain, Greece and Korea.<\/p>\n

The inspiration for her Vestiges<\/em> series can be traced to being surrounded by family possessions, the outcome of being from an immigrant family who lived through the Great Depression and threw nothing away.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deceased occupied a place in our home and everything had a story,\u201d Friend wrote in her artist statement for Vestiges<\/em>, a hauntingly beautiful photograph on fabric of her grandmother\u2019s \u2014 to her, nonna\u2019s \u2014 nightgown in the Algoma Central Lobby of the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre (PAC).<\/p>\n

\"\"

Friend looks on at Vestiges, which was inspired by a lifetime of being surrounded by precious family possessions.<\/p><\/div>\n

Her grandfather\u2019s (nonno\u2019s) dreams of becoming a professional dancer never materialized due to life\u2019s circumstances, instead working in construction to help provide for his family, who left northern Italy for Canada. Her family history and the stories passed among them is a reoccurring source of inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nightgown appears to be dancing, so I found it suitable for the space,\u201d says Friend of Vestiges<\/em> in the downtown St. Catharines location. \u201cI think of this space as a makerspace of stories. My grandparents danced together; this was a small part of their history, so I touched on that secret history. Theirs is one little story among many in the space.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says one of the most fulfilling things about her work is developing pieces for specific locations. A particularly rewarding experience has been Rodman Hall, where she experimented with new materials, including a 40-foot long photograph on silk.<\/p>\n

That work became part of the stage design for musician Diana Krall\u2019s world tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving the intimate setting of Rodman Hall and working with curator Marcie Bronson provided fertile ground for this artwork to develop, which ended up on the world stage,\u201d says Friend. \u201cThis creative process in your own community format says something about where seeds start and offers a spotlight to what we are doing as artists here in Niagara.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another one of her pieces, Our Little Dancing Girl, Evelyn, Age 9<\/em>, is the product of collecting photographs on the internet that strangers pawn off for next to nothing. The photograph had \u201cOur little dancing girl, Evelyn, Age 9\u201d scrawled on the back, evoking a curiosity about an unknown, individual history.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I wouldn\u2019t say my images tell a concrete story, they are constantly referencing things we don\u2019t know,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s the unknown aspects of making an image that directly intrigues me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Amy Friend poses outside of the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in downtown St. Catharines.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIn this series, I\u2019m not only interested in making artwork, but making and thinking about what it means to take a photograph, to lose a photograph; an image that belonged to someone else,\u201d says Friend. \u201cIt\u2019s a conversation I\u2019m constantly having through photography: making and investigating what it can and cannot express.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another thing Friend considers paramount to her work as an artist is teaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m engaging with the idea of creative practice and getting students to dig into the act of play,\u201d she says. \u201cIt gets us out of what I call the treadmill of production. Some of my best work has come out of completely screwing things up.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she loves seeing her students succeed, the most important lesson she hopes they learn is to embrace \u201cepically failing.\u201d Without it, Friend says, we lose the imperative experience of disappointment and working to solve creative problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy experience at Brock has been wonderful,\u201d says Friend. \u201cI\u2019ve had incredible opportunities. We continue to have a vision in what the School could and should be, and the potential is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the biggest changes with working she\u2019s noticed isn\u2019t just within Brock, but the art of photography itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s much more immediate,\u201d says Friend on integrating photography into our everyday lives. \u201cWe always have images close by. We scroll through photos on phones and other devices. There is a different type of interaction. It still has a place in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing that will never change is the human ability to respond to art in a unique way. She was reminded of this in February when taking her young daughter to the PAC for Family Day, which included various activities, such as crafts and therapy dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pointed to Vestiges<\/em> and said, \u2018You know, your mama made that,\u2019 and she glanced at it and said, \u2018Yeah, okay. Where are the dogs?\u2019 It was humbling and funny, but there was also a sweetness to her response,\u201d says Friend. \u201cMaybe at some point this image will be significant to her and maybe it won\u2019t. We all have reactions to art and each is a unique interaction that tells us something about ourselves and who we are at that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not often that Amy Friend goes out and photographs what she calls \u2018the real world.\u2019 Instead, the associate professor in the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts works hands-on to interrogate a medium, experimenting with both digital and analogue images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":65832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,3319,37,1,4],"tags":[2941,8634,384,2909,30,46,411],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65786"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65833,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65786\/revisions\/65833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}