The New York Public Library Announces the 2023 Picture Collection Artist Fellows

The New York Public Library is pleased to announce the 2023 fellows for the Picture Collection Artist Fellowship Program. This program, established with the generous support of the Anne Levy Charitable Trust, supports artists or scholars engaged in the research, development, and/or execution of a new creative or scholarly work based on the Collection’s holdings.

Noah Doely and Michelle Maguire: Things Are Not What They Seem

Working as collaborators, Noah Doely and Michelle Maguire are interested in finding a diverse range of subject matter within the Picture Collection that illustrates things hiding in plain sight. The disguised, the camouflaged, the incognito. Their goal is to spotlight veiled examples from the natural and human-made worlds that embody a broad spectrum of the things that are not what they seem—from masters of imitation to clumsy disguises and everything in between—compiling visual material that will ultimately become a book.

Noah Doely's work explores the paradoxical relationship between seeing and belief through photography, sculpture, and video. He received an MFA from the University of California, San Diego and has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, MacDowell, The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Penumbra Foundation, and is a 2018 Iowa Artist Fellowship recipient. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, appearing in various publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Juxtapoz Magazine, The North American Review, and Burnaway Magazine. He is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Northern Iowa and has led workshops and seminars at Mildred’s Lane (Beach Lake, PA) and Penumbra Foundation (New York, NY), among others. noahdoely.com

Michelle Maguire is a prop and set stylist whose work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Wired, Inc., Popular Mechanics, Runner’s World, and Bloomberg Businessweek, and for brands such as Apple, Converse, Hermès, and Lyft. She is also a bookmaker, whose self-published works that draw from family anecdotes, memories, and the art of the everyday can be found in the permanent collections of Yale, Harvard, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Center for Book Arts, among others. She is inspired by the endless possibilities of an archive, how the meanings of objects and images change when they are combined, manipulated or rearranged, and the joy of discovering unexpected connections, themes, and nuance that comes with looking closely. She holds a BSBA from The Ohio State University and an MLS from Pratt Institute and lives in Columbus, Ohio. michelle-maguire.com

JIM JOE: COLLECT YOUR REFLECTIONS

JIM JOE will create a visual art project that aims to celebrate the Picture Collection and its unique relationship to visual research through the creation of original artworks that amalgamate imagery discovered within the collection. Treating the collection as an integral partner and collaborator, JIM JOE will produce an original suite of artworks that will be collected in the form of an exhibition and catalog. Showing the associated references and original works together in a format that contextualizes the unique relationship between the collection, the images referenced, and the finished artworks, this project is both celebratory and revelatory.

JIM JOE is a living artist working in New York City. Their work, which originated in the form of an anonymous graffiti persona, has evolved into a diverse and conceptual art practice that incorporates but is not limited to calligraphy, identity, poetry, image-making, collaborative design, exhibitions and performance. JIM JOE has been exhibited locally and internationally, in public and in private, using physical and digital formats in both artistic and commercial contexts. jimjoewebsite.com

Craig Scheihing: Automatic Assemblage

Craig Scheihing aims to make an animated film that examines the Picture Collection itself, his own processes of collection and cataloging, and broader research into notions around image making and categorization. This project will sequence images by hand in response to how the contents of a folder relates to its own organization, then photographing each image onto film. This practice relies on intuition and play, working to bring these folders to life through the illusion of movement, and to put the vast representation of ideas and histories contained within the collection into conversation with each other.

Craig Scheihing is a filmmaker, photographer, and installation artist. He works with time, space, light, and movement through photochemical film; the physical expression of time in measured space, and public installations and performances; creating situations and organizing events with and in the public. Working freely between diary, documentary, essay, abstract, and expanded cinematic forms; his photographic work explores how, in a culture hyper-saturated with self-reflexive imagery, deep explorations of the personal can become a way for audiences to engage with the communal. His practice strives to engage with audiences though nontraditional exhibition structures: screening films and performing expanded cinema works at informal, temporary public cinemas, and installing simple swings in places they are typically not found but maybe should be. These approaches to exhibition seek to raise questions around legitimacy, value, access, agency, and what constitutes a public as both body and space. His work has been screened, performed, and installed in film festivals, museums, basements, bars, beneath bridges, in cinemas, vacant lots, galleries, garages, skateparks, protest encampments, abandoned piers, and universities throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. craigscheihing.tv

Audra Wolowiec: WAV

Audra Wolowiec’s project will mine images that evoke sound, silence, and noise. How is sound contained in images? How might we listen to images? WAV refers to digital audio files (Waveform Audio File Format), creating a relationship to the image files in Picture Collection as a way to understand and question how material phenomena is stored and contained, residing between the visual, embodied, and the ineffable.

Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist whose work oscillates between installation, print, and performance with an emphasis on sound and the material qualities of language. Her work has been shown at MASS MoCA, CCS Bard Hessel Museum, ICA at Maine College of Art, Print Center New York, and Art in General. Readings and events have taken place at The Poetry Project, Microscope Gallery, and Center for Performance Research. Artist Residencies include Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Complex Systems Art and Physics Residency at the University of Oregon supported by a National Science Foundation Grant, Dieu Donné, and Institute for Electronic Arts (iea) at Alfred University. Wolowiec teaches at Parsons School of Design and directs the publishing platform Gravel Projects. audrawolowiec.com