Artist Lecture: Vanessa Marsh @ CSUS

Recently Sac State hosted artist Vanessa Marsh for an artist lecture on her photographic work and technique. Marsh is a graduate of California College of the Arts – Oakland (CCA) and has been exhibited in the San Jose Museum of Art, and San Francisco International Airport.

Vanessa Marsh, Landscape #21

As an artist Marsh says she is interested in alternative processes, and likes to explore contradictory  narratives in art and media. During her lecture Marsh spoke of how her experience and perspectives have been developed as a result of past failure as an art student and being what she refers to as “re-reviewed”, which means that a large portion of her work on review was rejected and she had to go ”back to the drawing board”, as they say.

Vanessa Marsh, Surveillance 1

As graphic artist and photographer Marsh uses traditional photographic elements such as negatives, a darkroom, paper, and also, dodging and burning via Photoshop as elements of her artwork. Thematically, her work exhibits a relationship with landscapes and she has drawn inspiration from sources such as the movie Grapes of Wrath, shown in  black & white with a sparse Western landscape as its backdrop, and Walt Disney’s animations made with moving glass panes. Marsh’s graphic amalgamations also incorporate elements of clouds, grass, water, and sky for the sake of emotive qualities. A recurring theme that Marsh likes to use is that of a cave, which she likens to the psychology of habitat and the universe.

Vanessa Marsh, Waiting

In viewing a slideshow of Marsh’s works I was quite impressed with the actual product that she has produced from her contradictory narratives and use of a variety of production elements. In doing so she has created artworks that are emotional, ethereal, futuristic, gelatinous, and dreamlike. It was good to actually see what some non-commercial artworks look like in the current age of graphic design and technology, and what some possibilities could be; though Marsh does state that she feels quite comfortable working in analog.

At the end of her talk Ms. Marsh did a brilliant job of speaking of her influences and really elucidating the connections between them. Those influences are Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, the Hubble telescope, Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Lori Nix, Thomas Demand, and Vija Celmins.