New alt_space exhibition opens in January December 21 2021

Playback Theatre

January 4 - February 18, 2022
Reception: Saturday, February 5, 4-7 PM
Artists Talk: Friday, February 18, 11 AM

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About the Exhibition:

For Rebecca Sexton Larson’s alt_space exhibition, the artist blends contemporary and historic photographic imagery and processes to explore themes of memory, mortality, and family. In her exhibition statement, she explains that this body of work emerged from her interest in how family photographs and other popular cultural artifacts are used to document society.  She elaborates, “These visual representations left behind when one dies become a recorded history of an individuals’ family and existence.” Through this body of work, Rebecca explores these themes by collecting found family photos and memorabilia and then reimagining them in whimsical ways to explore potential relationships and prompt dialogues through personal storytelling. She continues, “By altering family images, I am able to examine stories passed along through time while also asking viewers to look beyond the familiar family photograph and question assumptions that surround photographic reality.”

To create these evocative, one-of-a-kind images, Rebecca’s practice involves a range of steps and unique processes.  She begins on a computer, combining her contemporary photographs of landscapes, buildings, interiors, and other subjects with scans of vintage nineteenth-century images she has collected.  She then creates a large digital negative. To complement the historic family photographs, she uses two printmaking techniques that originated in the mid to late 1800s: salt prints and van dyke prints. Rebecca elaborates, “these processes give the final prints a certain vintage appearance, fitting with this subject and adding a slightly surreal touch to the work.” After the images are printed, she finalizes each piece by hand-painting and drawing on the surface. While most of the images are framed, the artist has also created a series of handmade folios to display a selection of images in an album format to reference traditional storage and presentation methods for family photographs. She often pairs these images with quotes or anecdotes printed on vellum to create added associations and narratives for the viewer to consider.
 About the Artist:
 
Rebecca Sexton Larson attended college at the University of South Florida in Tampa and graduated with a degree in Fine Arts (painting) and Mass Communications (photojournalism). After working with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office and the Moffitt Cancer Center as a medical photographer, Sexton Larson decided to dedicate herself full time to a career as a fine art photographer, creating large hand- painted black and white pinhole photographs. She has since received Florida Individual Artist Fellowships for her work in 1998, 2002, and 2008 and an Artist Enhancement Grant from the State of Florida in 2006.  In 2005, she was commissioned by the City of Tampa to be Photographer Laureate for a year. Sexton Larson has curated, lectured, and exhibited nationally and internationally at various art institutions and organizations. She also has work in a range of significant collections throughout the country including Polaroid; the Progressive Corporate Art Collection; Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young); Cassilhaus at Chapel Hill, NC; Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe; the New Mexico Historical Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, FL; the Candela Gallery, Richmond, VA; and the Tampa Museum of Art.