Rare Specimen Design will host a virtual exhibition and talk with artist and writer Ashleigh Pedersen.

In her first virtual exhibition, “Other Realms,” she will talk about the ways in which painting has influenced her writing and acting, and writing and acting have influenced her painting.

Ashleigh Pedersen is a writer, actor, painter, and teacher. She is the founder of Write Well Austin, a small private tutoring business, and has nearly 15 years of experience teaching writing to students of all ages. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, where she held a teaching fellowship from 2006-2009 and won the Turow-Kinder prize for fiction. 

Ashleigh's writing has been featured in New Stories from the South, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Places, the New York Public Library’s lending app Library Simplified, and shortlisted for Best American Short Stories, Fractured 2020 Flash Fiction Contest, and a Pushcart Prize. Most recently, she completed her first novel, and her short story "Crocodile"—based on the first chapter of her novel—won The Masters Review 2020 Flash Fiction Contest. Her writing is represented by Jon Curzon at Artellus Ltd. Ashleigh also regularly pursues theater and film work, and has performed with the Wimberley Players, the Gaslight-Baker Theater, Different Stages, and Frontera Fest's "Best of the Week," among others. When not focused on her novel and plays these last few years, Ashleigh began teaching herself to paint portraits and landscapes. Her training has consisted of pestering artist friends via text for tips and informal critiques, and regularly studying paintings online in her spare time.

RSVP Required

Instagram: @ashbellart

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Rare Specimen hosts a virtual exhibition with artist Memuna McShane.

Memuna McShane is a painter based in Baltimore Maryland. She was born in Sierra Leone in 1996, during a period of Civil War. She later moved to the United States, was adopted at the age of 6 and grew up in Washington, D.C with her adoptive family. She completed a BFA in Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in December 2019, and is pursuing multiple creative paths while defining my own life narrative.

Memuna is taking ownership of her pain after finally being able to accept that she had a heavy and very traumatizing, non-existent childhood. She suffered great loss both physically and mentally. She lost her arm and family, but most important of all, she lost her self.

“It is hard for me to feel my own emotions and my hand transcribes them into my paintings. I paint to feel things that I normally don’t feel. I hope that the viewers can see what I feel and feel it themselves.” – Memuna

The images from her paintings come from deep within her. She starts with a vision of the painting, which may be realistic or fantastical. Once she starts a painting her hand takes over and she stops thinking. She lets raw emotions come out, without thinking about technical application. Her symbolized paintings are drawn on raw canvas, at large scale, and then completed them with color and detail.

As Memuna likes to say, “The world isn’t all rainbows and cookies. There is darkness. And I include that darkness in my paintings.” Painting has been her therapy.

RSVP Required

memunamcshane.com

austinstudiotour.org

bigmedium.org

Recorded November 15, 2020

Rare Specimen Design will host a book presentation and conversation with photographer Ernesto Bazan by Zoom webinar. Topics will include making photobooks, self-publishing, image editing and sequencing, materials and production, and the choral editing process used during BazanPhotos Workshops.

25 de Noviembre, Ernesto Bazan’s fourth monograph about Cuba, is a powerful and poignant photographic portrait of the island and its people in the days, months and years following the death of Fidel Castro on November 25, 2016. This deeply personal book documents Bazan’s emotional return journey to his adopted, spiritual home following ten years of painful exile. On January 6, 2006, Bazan was forced out from the country when he refused to give up teaching his workshops. He left Cuba with his wife, Sissy, and their twin boys Pietro and Stefano, on July 4, 2016, ironically Independence Day in the US.

The book includes color photographs of found objects and collaged images that Bazan collected while walking the streets of Havana. Peppered throughout the book are handwritten personal comments and quotes from Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Cuban authors Virgilio Piñera, Heberto Padilla, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Leonardo Padura, and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rose Kennedy, the widow of Bobby Kennedy. The quotes, which reference topics such as censorship, government control, complicity, fear, shame, regret, joy, and gratitude provide a running color commentary alongside the images that brings another dimension to the monograph.

RSVP required.

bazanphotos.com

bazanphotospublishing.com

austinstudiotour.org

bigmedium.org

Photographer Kevin Sweeney will host an virtual studio tour and artist talk to discuss returning to the darkroom during the COVID-19 pandemic. He will also talk about his process, revisiting film negatives, the frustration and gratification of working in the darkroom, how the darkroom has influenced his digital photography, and the need for creative production during challenging times.

RSVP Required

kevinsweeney.com

@kevinfsweeney

austinstudiotour.org

bigmedium.org