WORSHAM: Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane
Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane
SUSAN WORSHAM
January 11 - February 23, 2013
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane is a selection of images from Susan Worsham’s larger body of work, Some Fox Trails in Virginia, which highlights, among other things, the artist’s relationship to Margaret, her childhood neighbor. Margaret’s intricate stories and rich memories build layers of meaning for Worsham as she recollects her family history, and heals from the loss of her parents and brother. As the artist explains:
The story came full circle when one day Margaret brought out her dissection kit and microscope slides. I had forgotten that she had been a biology teacher, and here she was holding the same sort of slides that I was so fascinated with. Margaret’s microscope and slides have since become a metaphor for my own desire to look deeper into the landscape of my childhood. From the flora and fauna to the feelings, Margaret calls it “blood work.”
I can remember one particular time when I visited Margaret. I looked out of her large picture window and saw what looked like a nest or hammock of small red berries draped between the winter trees. I asked Margaret what it was. She answered, why that’s Bittersweet. “Bittersweet On Bostwick Lane.”
In 2012, Worsham received the Theresa Pollak Prize for Photography and was named one of Oxford American’s “New Superstars of Southern Art”. She has been artist-in-residence at Light Work in Syracuse, New York and nominee of the Santa Fe Prize for Photography.
Her work is held in private collections and has been exhibited at Light Work, Danville Museum of Fine Arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art during FotoWeek DC, Photographic Center Northwest, and Dean Jensen Gallery.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Susan Worsham (b. 1969) was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, where she continues to live and work. Her photographs draw from her childhood experiences and are deeply personal and poetic. In her series Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane, Worsham takes on not only the grief of losing both of her parents, but more potently, she comes to terms with her brother’s suicide. In her later work, By the Grace of God, Worsham followed these same roads to take on the mysticism of the literary South, by entering the lives of the very real people who live there.
In 2009, Worsham was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize For Photography, and her book, Some Fox Trails In Virginia, and won first runner-up in the Fine Art category of the Blurb Photography Book Now International Competition. She was named one of Photo District News’ 30 Emerging Photographers to watch in 2011; in 2015, she received both a Lensculture Emerging Talent Award and a Lensculture Portrait Award; and a year later, was nominated for the 2016 Baum Award for an Emerging American Photographer. She also received a grant from Kodak for her work. Worsham’s work can be found in the collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, VA).
