{"id":66143,"date":"2008-01-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/the-girl-of-my-dreams-at-the-fine-arts-center-photography-gallery\/"},"modified":"2008-01-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-09T00:00:00","slug":"the-girl-of-my-dreams-at-the-fine-arts-center-photography-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2008\/01\/the-girl-of-my-dreams-at-the-fine-arts-center-photography-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Girl of My Dreams” at the Fine Arts Center Photography Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tThe Girl of My Dreams
Photography Gallery
\nFine Arts Center Galleries, 溏心vlog免费B站

\nJANUARY 30 \u2013 MARCH 16, 2008<\/p>\n

<\/a>KINGSTON, RI\u2014 Stacy Renee Morrison\u2019s self-involving photographic project derives from the accidental – and remarkably fortuitous – discovery of a small, dilapidated leather trunk from the 1800s on the New York street where she was soon to live.<\/p>\n


\nThe 19th-century treasure, discarded among garbage bags on a street in Soho, contained anonymous vintage photographs and other very personal ephemera. The evolution of this mysterious material, as it found its way into Morrison\u2019s hands at a pivotal point in her own life, led to an extended, interpretive portrait of Sylvia DeWolf Ostrander (1841-1925). Her family, the renowned DeWolf Family of Bristol, Rhode Island, intermarried in her generation with the prestigious Colt Family of the same town.<\/p>\n


\nAs she has explained, Morrison originally \u201cmade photographs to canonize a life story left unclear.\u201d Initially, she carefully inventoried the intimate heirlooms inside the trunk, photographing, as she recounts, \u201ca ball honoring the Prince of Wales, mourning jewelry made of human hair, hand-made paper dolls, calling cards\u2026\u201d Some two years later, Morrison made her first discoveries as to origin of the materials and undertook serious genealogical research with the help of the RI Council for the Humanities (RICH) and the 溏心vlog免费B站 Library Special Collections Unit, where the Colt Family Papers have come to reside. Sylvia\u2019s youngest sister, Elizabeth, had married Samuel Pomeroy Colt, and the family\u2019s extensive personal papers were donated to the University Collections. Writer Paul Davis publicized the remarkable story of Morrison\u2019s discoveries in The Providence Journal, October 30, 2006. <\/p>\n


\nBut it was the ghost of the individual she would learn was Sylvia that emerged first and most clearly for Morrison. Indeed, before she even knew who her subject was, Morrison was haunted in her dreams by a woman in black, with braided hair. \u201cShe implored me to look, to think, to feel for her,\u201d is how Morrison recalls those nocturnal communions. For a period of time Morrison listened to the woman whisper secrets, and imagined vividly the 19th-century world inhabited by the girl of her dreams as a kind of embroidering of an invented past. Through the research she conducted thereafter, she learned the history of the woman\u2019s life, set against the Civil War, and the troubled marriages and constraining social customs that surrounded Sylvia and her sisters. Finally, over the course of her immersion in astonishingly rare materials, Morrison came to identify keenly with her historical subject and her subject\u2019s family. In irresistible interpretive homage she undertook to create a complementary body of photographic studies derived from Sylvia\u2019s images and life as she had grown to know it. <\/p>\n


\nIn the course of her research, Morrison became acquainted with the town of Bristol, and as she has described, \u201cwandered the town, meeting Sylvia\u2019s descendants, wearing her clothes, reading her books and simply trying to understand her. A century of time separates us, yet we are becoming intertwined.\u201d Eventually important to Morrison\u2019s project were additional materials generously shared by Sylvia\u2019s great- granddaughter. Dresses, a parasol, and more letters became significant props for Morrison\u2019s photographic series.<\/p>\n


\nIn the Fine Arts Center Galleries\u2019 exhibition, the photographs are of two sorts. Those set against a black ground are the objects that belonged to Sylvia DeWolf Ostrander. The complementary images are Morrison\u2019s interpretation of her life. Nuanced and evocative, they suggest restoring gaps in historical time. Themes of history, gender, identity and memory come to vibrant life in \u201cThe Girl of My Dreams,\u201d the first time Morrison\u2019s photographic study of Sylvia will be shared publicly. <\/p>\n


\nMorrison received a BA in Women\u2019s Studies from Rutgers University in 1996 and went on to become an Etiquette Consultant and Historian. As she describes her trajectory, \u201cIn the midst of trying to save the world from the ill-mannered, she received her Masters Degree in Photography from New York University in 2000.\u201d Morrison is Adjunct Associate Professor at Montclair State University and teaches at Cooper Union.<\/p>\n


\nShe has exhibited her photographs in galleries in New York and San Francisco. She is also a commercial still-life photographer \u201cwhereby she makes quiet and polite photographs of everyday objects\u201d and is represented by Zefa\/Corbis for this work.<\/p>\n


\nAn illustrated catalogue accompanies this exhibition.<\/p>\n


\nThe Public is cordially invited to partake of these special events:

\nFebruary 6, 2 p.m. Invited Talk by the artist

\nFebruary 7, 4 \u2013 6 p.m., Reception for the artist<\/p>\n


\nGallery hours are T \u2013 F, Noon \u2013 4 p.m. & Saturday \u2013 Sunday, 1 \u2013 4 p.m.

\nVisit the Galleries online at www.uri.edu\/artgalleries<\/a>.
\nThe Galleries are open to the public without charge and handicapped accessible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Girl of My Dreams Photography Gallery Fine Arts Center Galleries, 溏心vlog免费B站 JANUARY 30 \u2013 MARCH 16, 2008 KINGSTON, RI\u2014 Stacy Renee Morrison\u2019s self-involving photographic project derives from the accidental – and remarkably fortuitous – discovery of a small, dilapidated leather trunk from the 1800s on the New York street where she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}