rebecca copper
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Waterways (of Ohio)
ongoing Waterways (of Ohio) is a lens-based, socially engaged project that explores different ways to know, look deeply at, and form social relationships with the non-human life of local rivers, creeks, and waterways. I explore the sociality of lens-based practices: how the camera can encourage connection and relationship building. When I engage the body of water, I contemplate what it is I am exchanging with it. While photographs sometimes result, I don’t always bring the camera. I compare what I experience by the waters with what I read in books, and how the River(s) are named and traced on maps. My understanding of these waterways requires my returning again and again over time.
lens-based & socially engaged
photography, dialogical art, process-based, artistic research,
Ohio River, Olentangy River, Clear Creek
Studies
ongoing I explore different photographic processes considering the social and extractive thresholds of the camera. I’m interested in the flattening of time and space into two-dimensional representations by desires to hold, keep, or preserve. More specifically, I experiment with the slowness of analogue photography, preferring the tangible process. I eschew complete control over the image, threatening openness, surprise, and instability.
photography
artistic research, process-based
Single Parent Archive
ongoingSingle Parent Archive is an archive that centers the multiplicity of experience connected to single parenting, or caring for a dependent on one’s own. Co-founded with Marti Clemmons, the Single Parent Archive intersects identity, care/care labor value, and archival/preservation practices.
As of current, the Single Parent Archive is still in the midst of structural development and has acquired a small collection. The collection contains poetic narratives, photography, interviews, scanned recipes, illustrations, and more. The philosophy of the archive is to investigate alternative practices of archiving; to inquire and refuse the “capturing” of objects/stories/experiences from communities; to find regenerative aspects of preservation.
For more information
socially engaged
archives, parenting, lens-based, preservation, dialogical
collaborators: Marti Clemmons, Shelbie Loomis, Peter Freeman, Aisling Dunn, Amy Schuessler, Gilah Tennenbaum, Pat Young, Katharine English, Cindy Cumfer
Colitis
2022
A video triptych; distorted images overlap panning photographs, still film negatives, and Sony handycam footage. Four audio layers track the visualizations.
moving image
short film, photography, video, audio
Duration: 5min 5secs
NY Diary Film Festival 2022,
Bushwick, NY
Colonial Hills;
Suburb Study, Auditing Ohio, World of Colonial Hills
2017-2021Colonial Hills is a collection of site specific art projects that interrogate my relationship to an American suburb, Colonial Hills. The work includes photography, narrative writing, and socially engaged works such as textbook auditing and dialogical art. For more information
site-specific artwork
socially engaged, photography, dialogical,
personal narrative, interviews, textbook audits
collaborators: Minus Plato, Kevin Acton, 4th grade students: Idil, Jesusia, Griffin, Timothée, Adwoa, Okbahgzhi, Eva, Adrian, Evalynn, Chris, Kyad, Gavin, Augusta, Ben, Jordan, Will, Sam, Fadumo, Colin, Greta, Sharon, Shai, Sylvia, Scout, Pranish, Kennedy, Jesse
The Letter “U”
2022I worked with Laura Glazer and Lisa Jarrett to organize a workshop with Wendy Ewald for Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice MFA program. Wendy led a multi-day workshop discussing her collaborative processes. Based on one of Wendy’s projects with Katy Homans and educators in Tanzania, the MFA cohort created a photographic alphabet about the Martin Luther King Elementary School, where the King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA) is located. Photographs were taken to represent the letter “U” for the word “Useful”. The images were created in collaboration with artists Laura Glazer and Shelbie Loomis, and two elementary students. After showing our student collaborators how my camera worked, the students composed the image for “U’. They chose to demonstrate how a trash can is useful.
socially engaged , collaborative photography
workshop, photography, alphabet, dialogical
collaborators: Laura Glazer, Lisa Jarrett, Shelbie Loomis, Wendy Ewald, students of KSMoCA
Gatherade Stand (Nettle Soda Documentation)
2022Artist Gili Rappaport facilitated a socially-engaged artwork with students of the Martin Luther King School Elementary titled, The Gatherade Stand. There were several components to their social artwork such as poetry writing, music making, and creating a nettle soda emblazoned with the well-known Gatorade symbol. The Gatorade symbolism was a pop gesture, a throwback to the work of Corita Kent. I collaborated with the students to document the freshly canned soda, materials to make the soda, and their signage. The images were captured on an SX-70 Polaroid Land camera. Students naturally grew interested in the function of the camera.
collaborative photography
dialogical, process-based
collaborators: Gili Rappaport, 5th grade students: Aden, Ana, Bella, Caeden, Caterina, Chanel, Fatina, Matthew, Mo, Penelope, Rehema, Romelia, Romero, Serena, Taylor, Timmy, Zayair
Rachael SX 702020-2021During isolation and uncertainty of Covid-19, Rachael and I created a space of care at her family’s orchard using the Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera. The camera was a tool that helped catalyze a deeper development in our relationship with each other and the land her family has grown flowers and food on/with for over a decade.
For more information
socially engaged
photography, dialogical, process-based
collaborators: Rachael Anderson, land, plants, non-human living of the Anderson Orchard
Kids Academy Photo2018Each week, for four weeks, students from Kids Academy, the daycare my child attended, were given a disposable camera. During class meeting times, we discussed how cameras work and looked at different photo-based artists. After photographs were developed, we displayed the 4x6 prints across tables and talked about the images students took using the disposable camera.
socially-engaged
teaching, photography, socially engaged art
collaborators: Kids Academy, Mayah, O’Shun, Adrian
*Images by students Mayah, O’Shun, and Adrian, respectively