Michael Sherwin

Using the mediums of photography, video and installation, Michael Sherwin’s art reflects on the experience of observing nature through the lenses of science, popular culture and history. He has won numerous grants and awards for his work, and has been exhibited widely, including recent shows at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, New York, SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, the Clay Center for Arts and Sciences in Charleston, WV, and the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center in Atlanta, GA. Reviews and reproductions of his work have been featured in Art Papers magazine, Oxford American magazine, Don’t Take Pictures magazine and Aint-Bad Magazine, among others. He has been invited to present his work at universities and conferences across the nation, including the 2011 Society for Photographic Education National Conference in Atlanta, GA. Sherwin earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Oregon in 2004, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University in 1999. Currently, Michael Sherwin is an Associate Professor of Photography and Intermedia in the School of Art and Design at West Virginia University. He is also the founder and lead instructor for WVU’s Jackson Hole Photography Workshop and an active and participating member of the Society for Photographic Education.

Vanishing Points Statement 

I grew up in the quiet suburbs outside Cincinnati, Ohio in a mostly conservative, white, catholic community where nearly all of my friends and neighbors attended church on Sundays. Although my parents had grown up in catholic households, it was in their independence that they begun to question their relationship to the church. On Sundays, my father would often take my younger brother and I on long wandering walks in the dense forests of the Ohio River valley. These early formative experiences have led to a life long exploration of the mystery and beauty of our natural world. They have also left me with looming philosophical questions about the tenants of Western religion and its views on the sanctity of the land.

In the name of Manifest Destiny, westerners expanded across America claiming the land was theirs by divine right. Modernization and civilization swept across the continent “improving” the country and eradicating entire native cultures in its path. In my most recent project, Vanishing Points, I explore the ancestry of the American landscape, and reflect upon traditional Western Anglo American views of nature, wilderness, ownership and spirituality. The project was inspired by the battle over the use of land that is now the Suncrest Town Center in Morgantown, WV. The Town Center was developed on a 2,000 year-old sacred indigenous burial ground and village site less than a mile from my house. I am fascinated by this simultaneous presence and absence in the landscape, the seen and unseen.

Combining extensive research of historical archives, maps and contemporary satellite imagery, as well as direct collaboration with archaeologists, historians and scholars I have been able to locate and photograph numerous significant sites of Native American history in the regional area. The sites I choose to visit and photograph are literal and metaphorical vanishing points. They are places in the landscape where two lines, or cultures, converge. They are also actual locations where the sparse evidence of a culture's once vibrant existence has all but disappeared. While visiting these sites, I reflect on the monuments our modern culture will leave behind and what the archaeological evidence of our modern civilization reveals about our time on Earth.

One of the allures in visiting these sites is the possibility to reach back in time; to imagine and experience what the land must have been like hundreds and thousands of years ago. I am often reminded of the experiences I had as a child, where the presence of something ancient, mysterious, and much larger than myself still exists. However, nearly every direction you point the camera in today’s world, evidence of our modern civilization intrudes. It is this duality of experience that I seek to portray in the Vanishing Points project. The photographs in this series recognize the historical significance of an otherwise banal landscape, connecting a mysterious and ancient past with the familiar present.

Rachel Boillot

Rachel Boillot (b. 1987) grew up in New York and Singapore. Her undergraduate coursework was completed at Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She spent the following two years working as a photographic archivist for the Boston Housing Authority. Before returning to graduate school, she taught photography at My Life, My Choice, helping victims of sexual exploitation tell their own stories.

Rachel graduated from Duke University’s MFA|EDA program this past May. Post Script was her thesis work. The project is available as a limited edition photobook and also marked her first solo exhibition at the Cassilhaus Gallery. 

All of Rachel’s photographic work explores the American home and socio-cultural landscape. Other projects have looked at her own home, foreclosed homes, public housing developments, and former mining boomtowns.

As the recipient of a post-graduate fellowship, she will continue to photograph in North Carolina and Tennessee this upcoming year.

Post Script 

In 2011, the United States Postal Service announced 3,653 rural post offices would close. A disproportionate number of the condemned are located in the South. Several thousand locations have since been added to this list of erasure as the Postal Service struggles to cement its foothold in an increasingly digitized world. The fate of the rural post office remains unclear. 

Growing up in America, I scarcely thought about the post office. Its ubiquity in the American landscape rendered it nearly invisible to me. In Post Script, I explore how the post office embodies the identity of place.

The post office serves as town center in rural communities. Often acting as a town’s sole address, this location embodies the numerical identity of place. Without its presence in the landscape, a ZIP code is lost. Yet residents remain anchored in place. In spite of post office departure or a vanished code, the home stands. Attachment to land lingers, rooted deeper than digits. 

I was initially intrigued by the dilemma of the Postal Service because of the parallel to my own field. Like the letter, the analog photograph seems threatened at present. Though photography flourishes, the transition from analog to digital has rendered aspects of my own practice obsolete—even entirely extinct. As remains of the analog world coexist with the emergent digital technology, this moment of change begs consideration.

Upon reflection, I realized the similarity between photographs and letters. From the moment the envelope is sealed, or the shutter clicked, both objects bring messages from the past. As the object arrives, it brings this past into our presence, whispering across distance. As each takes flight, the sender relinquishes all control. Their very message relies upon the grasping interpretations of a recipient. Both are full of gaps, filled with mystery and the struggle to communicate across time and space.

This is a work about post offices. It is also a work about place—in this case, many different places in the rural South—but more importantly, the very notion of place. How we name it and if we can claim it.