Updates from the PAR-Projects blog...

What's in a photo? As the old saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’  This is still true in today’s galleries as artists work to maintain the delicate balance between self, story, and subject as they attempt to share untold stories and perspectives with the world. I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Raymond Thompson, Jr., an artist disguised as a photojournalist, whose project “Appalachian Ghosts” is on display in the Gallery @Studeo-PAR through July 2022. We chatted candidly about how he sojourns this path using his background in journalism to root his work creating subjective archives of the Black experience in American history. On his journey to photojournalism: “When I started school I wanted to be a biologist… something practical… so I stumbled through trying to find something super practical.  But Northern Virginia Community College had a photography class.  So I started taking those darkroom classes and it was like ‘ooh this is cool.’ I fell i...

Most of our conversations, at least the most memorable ones, happened over lunch. Soup and salad; that's what we did. We chatted about which fresh vegetables from the garden made it into that day's lunch and we chatted about techniques that were perfected for that day’s soup. “Remember Jonathan, always save a little of your stock for the next batch. That’s how the French do it. It keeps your flavors alive — balanced.” The Dr. Driskell I knew was a humble man — an artist of media and an artist of life. And while we hung out in his Hyattsville studio from time to time, woodblock printing and encaustics weren’t really my thing, so our connections were much more about finding ways to live and breath as an artist. From time to time, he’d give me a lead on some art finds — a rare Romare Bearden for example — but really, most chats of ours were just about life. Still, he knew I was an obsessive maker in the digital media/sculpture realm, so from time to time he’d make sure to note tha...