Art in the Stacks: Inas Al-soqi and Marshall Pratt

The Friends of the Vineyard Haven Public Library are pleased to present an exhibit of photographs and collages by Vineyard Haven artists Marshall Pratt and Inas Al-soqi. The exhibit will be on display during regular library hours from March 6th through April 1.

"Art in the Stacks" is a new initiative of the Friends of the Library, to provide individual artists an opportunity to show their work, and for library patrons to enjoy art at the library throughout the year.

Artist Statement: Marshall Pratt

My work is about people. Further more it is about the moments in-between the self established “Moments” of a person’s life. That which are steeped in humanity, yet all but lost in the shuffle of everyday living. I capture these moments, magnify them and re contextualize them in order to evoke a feeling of ambient familiarity with the viewer. In essence these abstractions couldn’t be more familiar, due to their context, yet couldn’t be more novel due to their presentation. In order to attain these results I work in the vernacular of 35mm film and candid street photography. Although, one would assume that in public the individual is in their most guarded state, I find that the opposite is true. In these moments of public interaction, be it banal or chaotic, our focus is continually on the other, either human or inanimate. It is these moments of suspended self-awareness I attempt to immortalize on paper. I also print my photographs small scale, forcing the viewer into an intimate examination of the work. In this way the viewer is encouraged to stare at that which is usually “un-stare-at-able” due to social convention, or a fleeting nature. The combination of the before mentioned elements of my work make it a truly unique view of the world around me, as well as a deviation from many of the trends in contemporary photography.

Artist Statement: Inas Al-soqi

Inas is a recent graduate of Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she focused on painting, printmaking and collage. Her work is a translation of her cultural and political background, as she grew up in both Middle Eastern and East European cultures. Her work plays with this dichotomy between the sanctioned and the unsanctioned and that of folk and fine art. Through her collage work she integrates commonplace printed ephemera into the realm of Fine Art to explore the societal repercussions of both. She uses primarily images of World War II and violence against women to question the political norms of her utilitarian background.

The Friends are also accepting submissions for their annual group art show in June. The deadline for submissions for the June show is May 1, 2011. Submission guidelines are available at the library and online at www.vhlibrary.org.