LARB Fellows Portfolio

by | Jul 22, 2022 | Visual Art, Visual Art 2022

Erin Gilbert, The Many Difficulties 2: Writing

A grayscale image of a crow sitting on the skeletal branches of a tree

Sam Carter, And The Smoke Rises

And the Smoke Rises, by Sam Carter

A photograph of light streaks in warA photograph of light streaks in warm gold colorsm gold colors

Urte Laukaityte, Process.ion 1

Clarissa Fragoso Pinheiro, Untitled

A digital drawing of a girl holding up scissors to her face overlaid with the words "I am Malory," "A Novel," "Vevina Anne Swanson"

Vevina-Anne Swanson, I am Malory

A drawing of a human figure in a skirt with the head of a deer

Alberto Quintero, Beautiful Warrior (After the Sculpture by Valeria Dalmon)

Are there any literary works that have inspired you in your practice- whether they’re books about art, books you would want to illustrate, or books that have influenced the themes, topics, moods or colors of your work?

Erin Gilbert

The Many Difficulties 2: Writing, 2020

Some of my favorite authors are very playful with the formal elements of their writing and some of the characters that I love to read about are not necessarily described in obsessively extensive detail (though I have a weakness for that too) but instead are caught in intimate moments that grant me glimpse of who they are in their bodies. My watercolor portraits are an attempt to do something similar. And at the same time, I’m doing all of this research and writing a dissertation in which the color red saturates everything. So I’m immersed in texts, both reading them and writing them, that are pervaded by red, and doing these watercolors in which blues are more prominent grants me some relief from that academic work. It is like an oasis that my thirsty eyes seek—painting these feels like plunging into cool water.

A grayscale image of a crow sitting on the skeletal branches of a tree

Sam Carter

And The Smoke Rises, 2020

I spent a great deal of my childhood either reading my mother’s various editions of National Geographic Guide to National Parks of the United States, watching The Crocodile Hunter, or reading various books published about its star, Steve Irwin. National Geographic has always inspired me to go find any and every bit of nature that seeps through the city I call home. It has shown me that there is beauty all around me, if I only learn to look past the steel and the asphalt and the concrete. Whether it be the flowers of a “weed” or the colors of a stray seed now grown into the full glory of its parent, but where it “shouldn’t” be, I can appreciate nature’s unwavering drive to live, regardless of human approval. This spirit of resilience inspires me to capture nature in its purest form. Steve Irwin of The Crocodile Hunterunderstood this. Not only did he dedicate his life to protecting every animal he came into contact with, but also to educating people on why all animals deserve the care and respect that he showed them. This mindset has continued to influence me into adulthood.

As I grew up, I began to read books like A Separate Peace by John Knowles and The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. These books portrayed mankind in a way that I had never seen before. Suddenly, humans became complicated.  People became victims of their own egos, their own follies, their own sins. Even the best of intentions were capable of having dire consequences. Both books have served as inspiration for my photography and my writing, which aim to showcase the side of humanity that is often overlooked or intentionally ignored. These books perfectly demonstrate the juxtaposition between the frailty of human life and the infinite capacity of human destruction. I hope to remind people to never forget the impact they have in a world with no do-overs and no retakes, on their best days and their worst. 

A photograph of light streaks in warA photograph of light streaks in warm gold colorsm gold colors

Urte Laukaityte

Process.ion 1, 2015

Vevina-Ann Swanson

I Am Malory, 2020

I have to admit: I was one of those kids that replaced their socialization with anime. I was homeschooled for most of my life until heading to college. Being raised under rocky living conditions added to my artistic escapism. Watching different anime shows was my way of escaping the world. Soon, I wanted to draw just like the artists and started to create. There are many artists that inspired my life, so I cannot simply pinpoint one of them. If I enjoyed the way someone drew bodies, I’d learn from them. If I preferred hair techniques from a different artist, then I’d pick up that style from them. I guess you could say that my art is a kaleidoscope of artists merged into a single identity. One thing is for sure,  though: all of my work is based on music and the emotions that come from it. There’s absolutely no way I could draw without music. It helps set the pace towards my strokes and create a story behind the piece. Whether the art would be based off of my book, my past, or some random image in my head, that image needed a story and an in-depth character. I would get that story through specific playlists and continue to replay that imagined scenario in my head like a movie until I saw a clear picture of what I wanted.

A digital drawing of a girl holding up scissors to her face overlaid with the words "I am Malory," "A Novel," "Vevina Anne Swanson"
A drawing of a human figure in a skirt with the head of a deer

Alberto Quintero

Beautiful Warrior (After the Sculpture by Valeria Dalmon), 2021

In the last few years, I’ve been fascinated with the devotional poetry of early modern mystics and its influence on contemporary Latin American queer poetry and aesthetics. A couple of poems that I have been considering illustrating are “Noche Oscura”(Obscure Night) by the 16th century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross and “Rapsodia para el mulo” (Rhapsody for the Mule) by the Cuban queer poet José Lezama Lima. My paintings are heavily influenced by the way these poems use figures, such as obscurity and unknowing, to complicate the production of meaning within seemingly stable normative orders, allowing the reader/spectator to participate in the unfathomable character of the world.

Clarissa Fragoso Pinheiro

Untitled, 2022

Erin Gilbert

Erin Gilbert

Publab Fellow 2022

Erin Gilbert’s work has appeared in publications such as AGNI, Asymptote, Bitch, and Brevity. She has participated in ecologically informed multidisciplinary residencies at The Marble House Project in Dorset, Vermont and the Interdisciplinary Art Group SERDE in Aizpute, Latvia. Having earned an MFA from Bennington College, she is now pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at the University of Washington.

Sam Carter

Sam Carter

Publab Fellow 2022

Sam Carter is both an avid photographer and writer. Her love of animals as well as her fascination with the complexity of the relationship between mankind and the rest of creation has driven her to try to bridge the gap between the joys and the suffering of each. She utilizes her art to not only showcase the beauty of nature, but also to remind her audience of the not-so-distant connection between animals and themselves. As the impact humans have upon their world bleeds into each new generation, all life cannot help but suffer along with them. Sam aims to remind her audience to not get so wrapped up in their own troubles as to forget their hardship and, more importantly, that their response to that hardship is never theirs alone to bear. This passion has led Sam to publish both her photos and her writing for the likes of the Pasadena Audubon Society, which works to educate the general public on the plight of birds everywhere, as well as show how people can make a positive change towards their conservation. This kind of advocacy drives Sam to create her art. Sam uses photojournalism to present the world as it is – a raw reflection of both the lovely and the ugly truth of what humanity has created.

Instagram: @agentc4rter

Urte Laukaityte

Urte Laukaityte

Publab Fellow 2022

Urte Laukaityte is a philosopher, writer, and tinkerer with various art forms. Her research interests span a number of disciplines within cognitive science with a primary focus on issues in theoretical psychiatry. As a philosophy PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley, she has been developing an empirically-oriented account relevant to phenomena like psychogenic conditions, placebo/nocebo, culture-bound syndromes, transient mental illness, mass hysteria, hypnosis, and suchlike. A good deal of her thinking draws from research within the so-called predictive processing/active inference framework, which has recently produced stimulating new ways of conceptualizing cognition more broadly and mental illness more specifically. Prior to her PhD, Urte completed an MSc in cognitive science at the University of Edinburgh and holds a BA in linguistics from the University of Cambridge. She is venturing into the world of general audience writing, having been published in magazines such as History Today, Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Domain Review, and others. Urte experiments with a variety of visual media with a special focus on photography and film. She has led a previous life as a contemporary dance performer — a sensibility that seems to have integrated into her other artistic explorations over time. She will be spending the year 2022-23 as a Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude.
Clarissa Fragoso Pinheiro

Clarissa Fragoso Pinheiro

Publab Fellow 2022

Clarissa Fragoso Pinheiro is a Brazilian writer and photographer currently living in New York City. She holds a BA in political science from Simon Fraser University and an MFA in literary reportage from New York University. Before NYU, she worked as a legal assistant, community organizer and crisis worker at a rape crisis center. Clarissa is currently a fellow at New York Street Photography Collective.

Instagram: @clarifragoso

Vevina-Anne Swanson

Vevina-Anne Swanson

Publab Fellow 2022

Vevina-Anne Swanson is an artist and author. She’s been drawing and creating since the day she began forming memories on this tiny planet – there’s something subliminal about having a blurry vision in your head reconstructed into reality for all to see. Of course, it’s not always an easy flow. She often finds herself questioning if she forgot how to draw. Vevina is not sure if any artist feels the same, but after pushing through that art block, she comes back feeling more skilled than before. Although she still draws traditionally from time to time, her favorite medium is to work digitally through Procreate. Her favorite pieces to draw are usually ones that circle around emotions, such as sadness or hints of melancholy. As contradictory as it may seem, creating those types of pieces transfers the low spirits she feels into the painting. In return, happiness appears. Living in an era where pressure is placed on us at a young age, Vevina’s glad to have found self-therapy and hopes that others will also find something that brings them happiness. As for writing, her passion is to write about those that have been wronged. Her first novel, I Am Malory, focuses on a pianist with dissociative identity disorder. The media demonizes these systems, and she wants to create justice through her pages. When Vevina is not busy writing novels or drawing, she loves sculpting little critters with polymer clay or reading horror novels.
Alberto Quintero

Alberto Quintero

Publab Fellow 2022

Alberto Quintero is an editor and hobbyist artist from Mexico who is currently a PhD Candidate in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. He is a co-founder and managing editor of Literalia, a publishing platform connecting Mexican authors with readers across the world. He co-edited Let’s Talk About Your Wall: Mexican Writers Respond to the Immigration Crisis (2020) with Carmen Boullosa  and was published by The New Press. His nonfiction piece “The Story of a Doll” was recently published in Foglifter (2022). His artwork focuses primarily on figurative and portrait painting.

Instagram: @albertoqs