November 3 – May 31, 2027 @ East Tennessee State University
East Tennessee State UniversityArt & Design and Slocumb Galleries in partnership with Charles Sherrod Library present "Founder: Pamela Pecchio"on view at the Third Floor Gallery of Sherrod Library in commemoration of the country’s 250 Celebrations. The exhibition features photography by renowned woman artist Pamela Pecchio curated by Slocumb Galleries curatorial fellow and Appalachian photographer Katie Sheffield.
"Founder (2011-2022)" began as a look at the US Founding Fathers through the artist’s lens as a new mother and female professor at the University of Virginia. The university was founded by one of the country’s most prominent patriarchs, Thomas Jefferson, whose presence is palpable. Reflecting on the intersection of personal, political, genderedand geographic histories, Pecchio brought the local landscape (and its traces of the Founding Fathers) into the studio to scan, print, collageand re-photograph it. The project expanded when the artist relocated in 2015 to the Boston area, the birthplace of the American Revolution.
"Founder"challenges notions of recorded history–questioning the authors and considering their identities.Artist Pecchio defined ‘founder’as a verb, is to“come to grief, to fail, to sink, to become submerged, to send to the bottom, to collapse.” The play on words and the conceptual take on the exhibition entitled ‘Founder’in relation to its subject, theFoundersencourages the viewers to view history on varied lens and critical mind, as she stated “American history, as most histories, is in a repetitive loop.” In commemoration of the 250thanniversary of the United States, Pecchio found herself reflecting on this work, current eventsand thoughts about the future.
Pamela Pecchiois a Boston-area multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in photography. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Aperture, Daniel Cooney Fine Art, Whetlab Projects and Wallspace Galleries in New York, as well as internationally at The Jordan National Gallery of Art in Amman, International Art Camp in Beijing, China, the Amsterdam DreamBike Festival, and Köeln Art in Cologne, Germany. Recent group museum exhibitions include the Lowe Art Museum, Figge Art Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, and Georgia Museum of Art. Her work has been reviewed in The New Yorker, the Village Voice, and Art Papers. Permanent collections include the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Yale University Art Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.She received her BFA from the University of Georgia, and her MFA from Yale University where she was awarded the Richard Dixon Welling Prize.Pecchio is currently Professor of the Practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
The exhibition is located at the third level of the Sherrod Library until May 2027. Sponsored by the ETSU Student Activities Allocation Committee, with Arts Fund from East Tennessee Foundation and the Tennessee Arts Commission through the ETSU Slocumb Galleries.
Category: Exhibits