CAROLINE MINCHEW

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Caroline Minchew (b. 1992 Arlington, Virginia) is an artist currently based in Richmond. Using the landscape as a guide for connection and story, she explores natural spaces through photography and psychogeography. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Sewanee: The University of the South in 2014 and her Master of Fine Arts in Photography + Film at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2022.

Education

2022 Virginia Commonwealth University, MFA in Photography + Film, Richmond, VA 2014 Sewanee: The University of the South, BA in Studio Arts, Sewanee, TN

Selected Exhibitions

2024 View Find 12, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA 2023

Kinetic! Hamiltonian Artists, Washington, DC

SECAC Members Exhibition, Try-me Gallery, Richmond, VA

VERNAL, Candela Gallery, Richmond, VA [solo] 2022 Unbound11!, Candela Gallery, Richmond, VA

Wet, flowering, dry, Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA [solo] 2021 ((oo—ao)), Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA

Unbound10!, Candela Gallery, Richmond, VA
Fool’s Paradise, MFA Candidacy Exhibition, Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA View Find 10, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA

2020 Heal, Jadite Galleries, New York, NY
2019 Alternative Processes Integrated Media, Texas Photographic Society, Plano, TX 2018 Inch by Inch, Touchstone Gallery, Washington, DC
2017 Ephemera, Target Gallery, Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA
2016 Earth Air Water, GlenEcho Photoworks Gallery, Glen Echo, MD

Flesh + Bone, Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC
2015 The Athenaeum Invitational, Athenaeum NVFAA, Alexandria, VA 2014 Transparency and Impressions, University Art Gallery, Sewanee, TN

Awards, Grants, and Residencies

2023 ChaNorth Artist Residency, Pine Plans, NY
2022 Adjunct Faculty Research Grant, VCU, Richmond, VA

Post-Master Teaching Fellowship, VCU, Richmond, VA 2021 Graduate Research Thesis Grant, VCU, Richmond, VA

Capital One Art Honorarium, Richmond, VA

Graduate Dean’s Scholarship, VCU, Richmond, VA 2020 Graduate Dean’s Scholarship, VCU, Richmond, VA

Penland Winter Residency, Penland, NC
2018 Mudhouse Artist Residency, Agios Ioannis, Greece
2017 Burren College of Art Residency, Ballyvaughan, Ireland
2014 Robert Bowden Award, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, TN

Permanent Collections

Candela Collection, Candela Gallery, Richmond, VA
The National Gallery of Art Photograph Conservation Study Collection, Washington, DC National Museum of American History, Washington, DC

Vernal is a series of photographic works that renders the life cycle of an ephemeral pool as a shifting, mirrored form. Within these pools, matter is produced by the wearing of surfaces and energy rises from rot. Photographed in a regrown forest for over a year, this work considers how multiple stories of land, ecology, and memory can weave together into a larger parable, where parallels are drawn between the relationship of caddisfly to an ailing soldier. Vernal pools are a malleable subject that embody how reaching beneath the surface darkness and decay reveals a spectral network that is very much alive…

It is the culmination of two years of quiet reflection and intention that resulted in a series of photographic works that speak to larger parables of life cycles. While the site in which the works were made is quite small, the representations of it transform the place to one that is otherworldly, ethereal, and ghostly. Time is bound to every essence of this work, from the photographic base to the bone black pigment’s source, and finally, to the physical time I spent there, absorbing and pursuing. It was a pleasure to submit to the seasons and create this work over the course of two seasonal cycles. To the best of my ability, I worked to remain unfettered by the pressures of quick artistic production. The trust in patient consideration allowed the final form of the work to reveal itself.