Now in its last day, an exhibition organized by the 49-year-old Photographic Resource Center showcases projects from its inaugural artist-in-residence program.
This was the first residency experience for both selected artists, Elizabeth Hopkins and Sri Thumati, whose wildly different methods stretch the boundaries of what’s usually considered photography.
Hopkins, a recent MassArt MFA alumna, makes art about memory, identity and place. Her latest body of work, “The Water Will Carry Us,” depicts Hopkins’ late father in the final months of his life. Thumati, who works out of a space at Central Street Studios, makes mostly cyanotype prints, in which sunlight and a photochemical solution react to make vivid blue compositions.
During the monthlong residency, artists had what Hopkins called the “gift of time” to explore materials and methods. They met weekly with Catherine LeComte Lecce, the PRC’s director of exhibitions and programs, and had regular feedback sessions with board members.
Not every residency gives that level of support. “I really do think,” Hopkins said, “it’s rare to have a residency that includes constructive feedback from kind, smart, supportive people.”
As an artist and recent MFA graduate herself, Lecce designed the program “around what I valued most – and wished had been available – in my own residency experiences,” she said.
Artists each got a $500 stipend for their time and a $200 materials fee to help pay for items needed to make their projects. Lecce hopes to increase that number in future years with more fundraising.
That support allowed each artist to step out of their comfort zone and experiment. Thumati, who normally uses negatives, leaves and other materials to make her cyanotypes, pushed herself to avoid using physical objects to print and to create more abstract shapes and patterns.
“It felt like I was rediscovering photography,” Thumati said.
For Hopkins, the residency was an opportunity to play with installing her existing photographs in a new way. Using the body of work she made in her father’s last few months of life, Hopkins experimented with printing on transparency and rice paper and hanging photographs from the ceiling. The transparency-printed photographs, installed a few inches from the wall, create a shadow projection effect as the light shines through.
Hopkins and Thumati make very different art – yet doing the residency together proved mutually beneficial to both of them.
“Seeing [Thumati’s] experimentation was really inspiring for my own work,” Hopkins said. “Just being in that space together – the creativity gets amplified.”
You can feel that sense of creative amplification in the final showcase. Thumati’s cyanotypes bleed across large swaths of paper; a patient stroke of gold here and there lifts landscapes out of what were once just blue blobs. Golden suns peek out next to mountains. Toward the back of the gallery, Hopkins’ printed transparencies float delicately with the room’s ventilation, their shadows fluttering on the wall. Portraits of Hopkins’ father – beautifully printed on rice paper – look so fragile that they could disintegrate at any moment.
The “2025 Artists-in-Residence Exhibition,” through 4 p.m. Sunday at Lesley University’s VanDernoot Gallery in Lesley University’s University Hall, 1815 Massachusetts Ave., Porter Square, Cambridge.
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