Altoona Virtual Lecture Series: Color and Sound

This virtual lecture series is designed to present the artworks of the contemporary artists while highlighting the importance of the two galleries of permanent collection pieces. These scholarly conversations will explore the medium of photography through its history, contemporary uses, and its possible future.

Photography requires light, but it also thrives with color and sound! This conversation focuses on artists April Friges and Heather Brand, both of whom use foundational human concepts in their artistic creations. Friges explores primary colors through precise darkroom photography and color theory while Brand experiments with the blending of sound and photography. Their artistic methods vary to include collaborating tools such as the sun, sculpture, and installation. Hear about their artistic processes and ask questions at this one hour event on Monday, February 1st, 2021 at 12:30 pm. Event is free of charge. Participants may join using the link provided in the reminder email one day before the event.

Heather Brand ’s artworks in photo-based mixed-media and video explores how individuals experience events/relationships and, often unintentionally, reflect them onto the world around us. Through imagery rooted in portraiture she calls into question our traditional reliance on photographic materials as visual repositories or placeholders for memory. Acting as part author

and part translator she works to create visual evidence of the degradation that comes with time and distance.

April Friges (b. 1981, Lorain Ohio) is a conceptual artist whose photographic work is created in a darkroom with photosensitive paper, light and chemistry. Integrating traditional photographic darkroom papers with three-dimensional sculpting methods, her works relate image and object, perception and theory. Selections from her projects Untitled Color and CMY RGB are currently exhibed at the Pittsburgh International Airport through 2020. You can find her photographic collages also available for public auction to help support Silver Eye for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA. Her work has been included in venues such as LAXART, The Spencer Museum of Art, MOCAD, ForYourArt, AIPAD and PGH Photo Fair. Permanent public and private collections include The Museum of Contemporary Photography, BNY Mellon and the Duane Michals Estate. Her work is also available at Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto. Friges received her MFA in studio art from The University of California, Irvine, and is the BFA Program Director and Associate Professor of Photography at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA.