Tahlula Potter: Transmogrifications

November 13, 2020-February 1, 2021

SOLO GALLERY

The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum will reopen on-site galleries this November and include an exhibition from the ART for EDUCATION program at WAAM as a part of YES – Youth Education Space. This YES programming will be a solo exhibition by Tahlula Potter titled Transmogrifications. The exhibition, presented in WAAM’s solo gallery, opens Friday, November 13 and continues through February 1, 2021 with WAAM’s new limited hours of Friday through Sunday from 12-5 pm. Tahlula Potter, Onteora High School junior,  was chosen for a solo exhibition by the WAAM’s Education Director, Beth Humphrey.

ART for EDUCATION at WAAM presents eight exhibitions a year dedicated to student artwork in the Youth Exhibition Space (YES Gallery). This space provides students from kindergarten to college the opportunity to exhibit their artwork alongside regional artists and our Permanent Collection.  The YES Gallery also hosts interactive educational programs, special exhibits, and community engagement projects. For this exhibition, the YES gallery will temporarily take over WAAM’s solo gallery space.

A statement by Tahlula Potter about Transmogrifications:

“Decay in the human body makes itself known through stark patterns that grip the corpus with motley hues. Decomposition has been largely censored from everyday media.  I believe this natural process should not be hidden.

In Transmogrifications, I explore death through a romantic lense. I created this body of work in order to communicate the beauty of decomposition, despite and because of the grief and terror we associate with it. The marbling of veins, ghostly impressions of clothing, and broad reworking of flesh are my main muse. My depiction of this corporeal process ranges from abstract to figurative, intimate to foreign.

This series of artworks started out as an aesthetic fascination, but eventually became an avenue to better understanding death in a manner that did not viscerally scare me. An existential dread of non-existence has possessed me since childhood. Transmogrifications is my meditation on death. Through painting, I have attempted to come to terms with the inevitable:

I am my body. And my body does not end when I die. My body is simply transforming into something else.” – Tahlula Potter

Tahlula Potter is a sixteen-year-old painter born and raised in the Catskills Mountains. She is currently a student at Onteora High School. She is mentoring under local artist Christie Scheele. Tahlula’s interests in medicine, feminism and philosophy influence her art and politics.