Uncanny Bodies 01
Download Image: Web
The Lycoming College Art Gallery will welcome Corrie Francis Parks whose work investigates the ongoing research of the autonomy of the inanimate. Her exhibit, titled Uncanny Bodies, will open Friday, Oct. 21, at 5:30 p.m., with a gallery talk, and will run through Nov. 26. The event is free and open to the public.
Uncanny Bodies draws on the artistry of scientific documentarians like Robert Hooke and F. Percy Smith, who revealed the wonders of microscopic structures and beings through the technology of their times. Butterfly Effect contemplates the human complexity encased in a single data point, pulling statistics from Baltimore City’s Open Data. In Angle of Repose, Parks replicates glacial processes in a human timeframe, creating miniature glaciers that come alive in collaboration with gravity, warm ambient temperatures, and solar radiation. Foreign Exchange offers a web of connections, real and imaginary, between the masses of humanity and the systems we live in.
“As beings confined to our own human scale, the camera lens offers a portal into a new dimension of existence,” said Parks. “For me, working with sand means contemplating the significance of the individual. On a microscopic scale, the movement of one small grain can ripple down the length of a beach, can tilt the world on its axis.”
Parks brings life to the inanimate through frame-by-frame manipulation of physical materials. With one hand under the camera and the other in the digital realm, her films and installations maintain an organic connection to traditional production methods while fully integrating digital technology. She is an associate professor of animation at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and author of Fluid Frames: Animating Under the Camera with Sand, Clay, Paint and Pixels.
Parks has been Artist-in-Residence at the MacDowell Colony, subnet Salzburg, Fundación Valparaíso and Klondike Goldrush International Historic Park, a Fulbright Fellow to New Zealand and Fulbright Scholar to Austria, and a grant recipient from the Montana Film Office and Maryland State Arts Council. She has created projection-based installations for Light City Baltimore, USA; International Media Art Biennial SEE DJERBA in Tunisia; and the UnDARK Festival in Russia. Her award-winning short films have screened at Annecy, Hiroshima, Ottawa, Zagreb, and at major festivals around the world.
The Lycoming College Art Gallery, located in downtown Williamsport at 25 W. Fourth St., contributes to the city’s arts culture and allows the College to become more involved with the surrounding community. Lycoming Art students have the opportunity to interact with visiting artists and learn first-hand the inner workings of an art gallery. This fall, the gallery is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 4-8 p.m. For more information, please visit the gallery online at: https://www.lycoming.edu/art/gallery/22-23.aspx.