ARIEL C. WILSON (CV)

Ariel C. Wilson is an artist and educator whose work investigates notions of neutrality, photographic intermediaries, and the fluidity of perception. Her work draws upon processes and materials traditionally used in photography while formally hovering between photography, digital art, sculpture, installation, and video. While her practice is primarily studio-based, she is equally informed by conversations with students, probing digital workspace, and time spent in the mountains and desert. She holds an MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico and a BA in Studio Arts from Willamette University. She has been selected to present work at the Society of Photographic Educators (SPE) regional and national conferences, and received residencies from Bikalpa Art Center (Kathmandu, Nepal) and Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, Vermont). Her work has been exhibited internationally and in twelve cities across the United States. Wilson is currently based out of Dallas, Texas, where she is a Lecturer of Photography at Southern Methodist University. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

My studio practice currently centers around questions and assumptions of photographic and human vision. The photograph itself is often as invisible as the dominant societal values that it reflects and constructs. Instead of looking through the frame of the photograph, I use the materials and processes of the medium to try to see a photograph. Like peering back into my own retinas, this act is both self-reflexive, and seemingly impossible. Rather than clarity or fixity, I move towards visual uncertainty. Within my grasping attempts to decipher and discern, I encounter wonder and pleasure: a productive confusion. I work to create objects that offer an embodied experience of looking, reminding me of both the camera’s and my own constructed experience of vision. The fluidity of intermediary spaces endlessly ignites my curiosity, and most accurately reflects my lived experiences: neither here nor there, paradoxically flat and infinite like the clear blue sky. 

In To See from Somewhere, I expand space between traditional photographic binaries: black and white, front and back, flat and dimensional. I explore the inherent quality of the material: the paper-white of inkjet paper, its fluid tendencies, it’s multiple surfaces. I seek to create rich and slippery print-objects that explore the boundaries of my ability to discern subtle changes in tone on a gradient or scale.

Distinguishing from the Referent, Variation I (Layer Mask Selections, is an iterative series of photograph of a piece of white paper, curling away from the wall. The image is digitally manipulated to separate the paper from the wall through Photoshop Layer Masks. This process of masking within the software is highlighted as red, or black and white but is only visible within the digital workspace and doesn’t traditionally show up in the print. Within the series, I play with the visibility of the image of the paper, the physical paper, the wall, and the digital layer mask itself.

Middle Grey is a photographic standard used to calibrate exposure and color within an image. The recipe for this color is owned by companies that reproduce it, painted on cardstock or embedded in plastic, as a tool for photographers. In Becoming Neutral, I repeatedly print cyan, magenta, and yellow atop of one another in an effort to make my own Middle Grey, to varying degrees of success. I then re-photograph my test strips and use my imperfect greys to correct, and alter, the tone of the paper according to my subjective standard.