Perspective Gallery

Perspective Gallery Fall Exhibition

Chrissy Shammas: Wild Relatives

Sept 17 – December 19, 2024

Chrissy Shammas grew up in Chesapeake, Virginia, enchanted by animals both big and small. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Cinema from Virginia Tech, she moved to Salt Lake City, which became home base for her travels around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and beyond. Her work features unbaited wild animals, which she hopes to document in a way that is both authentic and picturesque, inspiring others to fight for their preservation. When she's not in the field, she volunteers as a citizen scientist for local projects, maintains trail cams, and raises proceeds and awareness for conservation issues.

In collaboration with the Ati:Wa:Oki Indigenous Community Center and with a grant from the Diverse Voices and Perspectives Lecture Series through the Associate Provost for the Arts, Chrissy will be an artist in resident October 23-25, 2024. A public reception and lecture celebrating her art will be held at the Perspective Gallery, Friday October, 25, 3-5 p.m. with the lecture beginning at 3:30 p.m. All events are free and open to all.

This event is sponsored by the Native and Indigenous Alumni Society, Alumni Engagement at Virginia Tech.

Flex Gallery Current Exhibit

(Located on the 2^nd floor hallway adjacent to the Perspective Gallery)

Sara Woods

September 2024-April 2025

Sara Woods is studying studio art within the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech. She is from central Virginia and considers her hometown on the outskirts of the Shenandoah Mountains to have instilled in her a grounded perception of a cyclic and simultaneously ever-changing environment. Eventually this led to her initial commitment to wildlife conservation in academics before transitioning to a BFA. She considers this background to have had significant influence on her work, as well as her deep-rooted familiarity with concepts of political polarization and human connection amongst displacement.

Sara’s practice is explorative, navigating the interconnected nature of time and identity in relation to a stimulative sensitivity with our surroundings. These themes are demonstrated through various time-based mediums such as digital video and sound as well as photography and painting. Her most recent project involvement includes a sound piece in collaboration with an upcoming exhibition for the 2025 Architecture Venice Biennale, and the creation of media for the VECTOR South project funded by the CDC tasked with researching systemic disease control.

Artist Statement

Collectively we orient ourselves in a digital Anthropocene, each of us collecting ways that we are able to absorb the world we have.

I like it when I look at something and can pick out fragments of some type of decisiveness- cues that, if caught in action, expose lore that has trickled from some larger significant whole. In my practice, I single out these moments to bring attention to them and elevate each of their narratives, connecting the importance of smaller notions to our larger perceptions. It is how I absorb both the tangible and intangible.

My pieces are situations which take on a life of their own as enigmatic singularities, blurring the binaries of process and product, material and hypothetical, challenging what we see as important. In a world of illusive hyper stimulation, to notice the subtle has become more like a decision to make. I want my art to place in front of the viewer a brief iota of their universe, as a thing to take and be taken by.