To the right: Tori Ellison, “Windows in the Sky”, 2024, Screenprint, 30" x 22"
October 16 - December 7, 2024
Reception on Wednesday October 16, 6 - 8 pm
Free and open to the public
Featuring Tori Ellison and Mami Takahashi
College Park, MD. The Stamp Gallery is pleased to present the mixed media installation “We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity,” by Tori Ellison and Mami Takahashi. Takahashi’s sound collage and videos accompany Ellison’s sculpture and prints made with UMD MFA student/teacher Varvara Tokareva, which incorporate UMD writing students’ poetic phrases about home and place. The central symbol is the swift, the bird that lives aloft for years, sleeps on the wing, drifting through clouds, drinking raindrops. UMD and George Mason University teacher Ellison, a former Guggenheim editor and LA Weekly art critic, focuses on the body, absence and transformation in art collected by the cities of Seattle, Inglewood, and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc. Takahashi’s art explores life as a woman far from her Tokyo home. Both have exhibited in 11 American states and abroad.
Tori Ellison (BA Reed, MFA School of Visual Arts, NY), a MacDowell, Brush Creek, Blue Mountain, and VCCA Fellow, has exhibited art in eleven states at venues including: Portland Art Museum, Bellevue Art Museum, Paris Gibson Square Museum, Seattle Art Museum Gallery, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, New York’s PaineWebber Art Gallery, China’s Shenzhen Art Institute, Winston Wachter Gallery, and NYU’s Grey Art Gallery. Her art is collected by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Jordan Schnitzer, the City of Seattle and Inglewood, CA, Janine Wang (C.C. Wang Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art), and Portland Art Museum. Ellison designed five operas for the Fisher Ensemble in Los Angeles, Seattle and New York. An art and film critic for LA Weekly, Seattle Weekly, Seattle Times and Artweek, she edited books for Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Abrams, and Rizzoli. She teaches at George Mason University and the University of Maryland.
Mami Takahashi is a multidisciplinary artist from Tokyo, who currently lives in Chicago. Using performance, installation, video, and urban intervention, her practice explores the complexities of being an immigrant woman struggling with the US immigration system and her awkward experience in the new culture.
Previous exhibitions and performances have taken place at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco; International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago, IL; The International Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Canada; Gwangju Folk Art Museum, Korea; Instituto Municipal del Arte la Cultura, Mexico and Toriizaka Art Gallery, Tokyo, among other venues. She holds an MFA from Portland State University, and a BFA from Joshibi University of Art in Japan. Takahashi is a recipient of the Ford Family Award for MASS MoCA residency.
This exhibition and related programming is supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council and a Pepsi grant.
ABOUT THE GALLERY
Located on the first floor of the Adele H. Stamp Student Union—Center for Campus Life at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Stamp Gallery is dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art, especially the work of emerging and mid-career artists. The Stamp Gallery supports contemporary art that is challenging, academically engaging, and attuned to broad community and social issues. Through meaningful exhibitions and programming, the Gallery offers outside-of-the-classroom experiential learning opportunities. It functions as a laboratory where emerging artists and curators experiment and work through their ideas. The Gallery’s programming aims to emphasize the importance of process to contemporary artistic practice and to provide a forum for dialogue.
FREE and open to the public.
Gallery hours: Mondays–Thursdays: 10 am – 8 pm, Fridays: 10 am – 5 pm, Saturdays: 11 am – 5 pm, Sundays: Closed. More information: stamp.umd.edu/gallery.