Vanessa Woods: Generations @ Recology Art Studios

Written by Weston Teruya

In Generations, Vanessa Woods opens up her studio process, revealing her voraciously generative approach to iterating ideas and forms. In installations through the gallery, she presents sculptural tableaus alongside photographs that capture and frame elements of those arrangements, even as they are then altered and inserted within those sets to appear in yet other photographs.

Profoundly inspired by her experiences with motherhood and the attendant renegotiation of her identity and bodily autonomy, Woods gives each generation of forms in her creative process equal weight. Rather than a hierarchy pointing to an inevitable and polished endpoint–a parent supplanted by her child–Woods offers something more rhizomatic, a latticework of relationships that values both sources and outputs in equal measure. What might appear to be moulded foam packing materials usually used to snugly fill the negative space around valuable products during shipping have been re-cast in concrete–the typically disposable made permanent; the flimsy cradle for high priced goods given their own weight. Similarly, plinths and sculptural shelves made of wood from crates and palettes, and rebar unearthed from concrete structures are also woven throughout the installations and photographs. The hidden and auxiliary are given their consideration. Photographs that might typically be the end result, capturing the perfect angle on a still life arrangement, are re-inserted, cut and collaged, masked by other forms, re-shot, printed, and transformed further.

Elements recur across iterations–a sculptural form, part of a photographic print, the torn edge of a collaged shape–like characters slipping up and down a stream. These are not works that are resolved in a final form or in our ability to perceive a singular image. Parents and children generously feed into and shape one another. Our navigation of these images demands that we join Woods in looking and thinking expansively, considering negative spaces, discarded packages, each generation as a holistic exchange.

Vanessa Woods works in photography, collage, and sculpture to explore discourse around identity, motherhood, and gender in contemporary art. Her work has been exhibited at Filter Space in Chicago, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and The Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose. Woods has received awards including a Center for Photographic Art Artist Support Grant, a Film Arts Foundation Grant, and the San Francisco Art Institute’s MFA Fellowship; and residencies at MacDowell, Djerassi, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and in Pont-Aven, France, through the Museum of Pont-Aven. Her first monograph, M/Other (working title) will be published by Luhz Press in 2027.