Your Custom Text Here
Dear Constance,… , 2020
Video
3 minutes, 3 seconds
“Jule, don’t wait until it gets better, start now, [take it from there,] and put it all in …”
(Constance DeJong, 2016, 205 Hudson St / Hunter College, 2nd Floor Kitchen)
Jule Korneffel
MFA ‘18
www.julekorneffel.com
@jule_korneffel
© the artist
Listen (Do the Right Thing), 2020
Video loop embedded in webpage with white background
1 minute, 15 seconds
It was while working with Constance that I started setting text to appear in a rhythm, a rhythm you could hear in your head as you read, a rhythm of speech. To get the full effect, you need to listen. If you can listen for Constance’s voice as you read, that’s even better.
Liz Naiden
MFA ‘19
www.liznaiden.com
© the artist
Basement Theory 2084 (excerpt), 2019
Video
2 minutes, 57 seconds
Basement Theory 2084 is part of an ongoing work that utilizes writing influenced by my dreams. The first iteration occurred during Constance's artist's book class in such form. Full video can be viewed here.
Arkadiy Ryabin
MFA ‘17
www.arkadiyryabin.net
© the artist
I am trying to fill the well, 2020
Video
1 minute, 20 seconds
James Chrzan
MFA ‘19
www.jameschrzan.com
© the artist
Lyra, 2020
Various mosses, shells, springtails, soil, and plastic container
5 x 7 x 2 ¾ inches
Apollo gave Orpheus a tortoise-shell lyre with which he charmed all those for whom he played. This harp was immortalized in the constellation Lyra which includes the brightest star of the Southern Cross, Vega.
Constance was a guiding star during my time at Hunter. I first took her Artists’ Books class which piqued my interest in the interactive object as she challenged the boundaries of what was once a fixed definition. Books could be more than folios; they could be time-based, causal objects. Things gained a book-ness about them. Constance’s sage advice and cutting wit as my thesis advisor guided me through the indulgent freedom of the graduate thesis project. My writing and my making have loosened and grown wings with her support, leaving space for the poetic and associative qualities I love so much in her work.
Christopher Lin
MFA ‘15
www.christopherlinstudio.com
© the artist
Cancel, 2020
Video Poem
51 seconds
I made this video entirely on my phone with using an Instagram filter and a video editing app. The reason why I chose this piece in thinking about Constance is because meeting her affirmed in me a belief that language can and should exist on as many platforms as possible. Her work reminds me to keep pushing till the image bends.
Cat Tyc
www.cat-tyc.squarespace.com
© the artist
The Hierarchies of Time Collapse, 2020
Video
2 minutes, 36 seconds
Dawn Frasch
MFA ‘11
www.dawnfrasch.com
@dawnfrasch
© the artist
doubleholeexperiment, 2020
ray ferreira and Erik Patton, vis-à-vis Vers
Video + Audio
02min 09sec
supplement for doubleholeexperiment, 2020
ray ferreira and Erik Patton, vis-à-vis Vers
Text
64.6 MB
ray ferreira and Erik Patton
MFA ‘16
rayferreira.net
erikpattonstudio.com
© the artist
Tania Cross and Constance DeJong, photographed in 2013 by Edgar Leciejewski.
My first semester at Hunter MFA was incredibly difficult for me. I was struggling to fit into a 2D seminar and a “traditional studio practice” was not working out well. As I was questioning my life choices, I found myself pounding on the studio door of Ellie Ga late one fateful evening, and her advice to me was to “go and find Constance, take all of her classes and hopefully she will be doing more tutorials next semester!” Armed with this knowledge I was able to secure a tutorial spot with this Joan of Arc type figure, which led to a video elective, a spot on the Early Show curatorial squad and eventually CDJ as my thesis advisor.
Throughout this journey, CDJ provided me with helpful texts, generously indulged my stories and encouraged my love of travelling, theater, photo history, performance, classical music, mysticism, hard core feminism, martinis, ideas of objecthood, queer alliances, historically-based research, ephemera, long novels, and a well earned cigarette break. As our relationship deepened, and more personal details were revealed on both sides, our similarities overran our expectations and a true friendship evolved that I will be forever grateful for.
Constance recognized that I was a time-based media artist in the most abstract sense allowable; before I ever had. She was able to understand my language as I was figuring it out: how to explain my visual expressions as they were evolving and she is by far the best and most patient editor I have ever worked with. She gave me the gift of permission to continue along that path. Even though I would often have to stop and clear the road ahead, I had the conviction to power through it, knowing I have a place in the pantheon of path pavers before me.
I will never forget while we were working on the Early Show, I was reporting to CDJ after a particularly harrowing interview I had conducted with an artist that I kept referring to as “crazy”, (who, in my defense, was crazy, and the situation in the studio itself totally absurdist). She half chuckled, gently gripped my wrist and looked deep into my eyes and told me, “Someday my dear, some poor overworked grad student will be saying the same thing about you!”
May 6, 2020
Tania Cross
MFA ‘08
© the artist
GALLERY HOURS
Tuesday–Saturday, 12–6pm
