Catalyst: inspiration / collaboration / news / miscellany
Welcome to Studio Stimulus, I'm so glad you are here. I’ve retooled my newsletter. I’ll use this platform, in-person meetings, and my website instead of sharing my new work on social media. It will feature inspiration, collaborations, and finally, a section of news/updates, 3-4 times a year. I hope you enjoy it! If not, feel free to unsubscribe—no hard feelings. Subscribe here.
Catalyst: Department of Inspiration
I had a love-at-first-sight moment when I first came across the visionary art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas this summer. I could only look at it for short periods of time—the waves of inspiration were too intense. My first glimpse of it was in an old post on the blog Socks, and I thought, or perhaps hoped, that the Atlas was obscure, because I wanted it for myself. Turns out, it has baffled and inspired hordes of academics, scholars and artists. But that has not discouraged me from claiming it. I see Warburg as a kindred spirit, and an artist. He worked intuitively, his medium was history; tracing motifs, gestures and themes from antiquity to the Renaissance to advertising images from his own day.
The fact that Warburg never finished the Atlas felt like an invitation. The themes connected directly to my own work, and Warburg also created collections of images. Adding my own images directly into the Atlas feels like stepping into the tide of art history, disrupting the flow, and even time traveling. I’ve completed one Atlas panel so far, panel 48, centering on the pagan goddess Fortuna.
Fortuna is the goddess of fate, and she is often depicted using her garment as a sail, or with her foot on the rudder of a boat. The theme of self-liberation is suggested in the dialectic of the panel—and you can definitely see that in my version. Self-liberation resonates in my current phase. My joyful emergence from a long and draining relationship combined with my son leaving home for college gave me the freedom and time to explore and create a new sense of myself and stronger work.
If you would like to see a tight edit of images from my new ongoing collection, Clay Feet, let me know, and I can send you a PDF.
Department of Collaboration
My studio visits this winter have been revitalizing amid these icy, dark days. Online or in person, connecting with other artists and visual people over images and ideas is sweet. As an artist, you know that many people will never understand what you do, plenty won’t like it, and that you are extremely unlikely to make money. But you can definitely connect in conversations that are satisfying and exciting.
My most recent was a studio visit with Vanessa Woods, a talented artist who works with finesse and depth across mediums. Her fearless experimentation extends from the image-making process to the beautiful final work which might be a sculpture, a photograph or something in-between. Following her example, I will try to think beyond the frame of the image, exploring innovative ways to show the work beyond a flat photograph on the wall. We talked about clay as a material of origin, prehistoric idols, dismantling and rebuilding.
Another gratifying dialogue I'm having is with the photographer and writer Danielle Ezzo. I came across Ezzo's work in Dear Dave magazine and was captivated. It was the first photography I’d seen that engaged AI in an artful and truly unexpected way. I thought I might her to create photography/illustrations for The Transmitter, and we met over coffee. She brought beautiful prints, and our discussion was fluid and dynamic. I commissioned her to illustrate a regular column on AI and neuroscience—and as of today, we have published Ezzo’s art in three Transmitter NeuroAI essays.
In the brainstorming stage we read and suss out the main points in the article, which is always a neuroscientist-written essay. We negotiate which ideas we might tease images from and how, and trade sketches.
We share a Miro board to collect and discuss palette, tone, texture, and concepts. The final direction is selected from color sketches, then Ezzo makes a photograph and layers the AI in to create the final image, in a process that is unpredictable and fascinating.
NewsI completed my first ever photography assignment for The New York Times in December 2024, to illustrate an Article by Sloane Crosley.
Photographer/artist Sarah Knobel will be writing about and sharing a gallery of images from my ongoing Clay Feet work on Lenscratch in early March.
Illustrations and a video I commissioned and produced in 2024 were honored with awards from the AZBEES, AI-AP, Communication Arts, The Eddies, The Ozzies and The Tellys.
I'm honored to be a 2025 mentor in the New Museum's New Inc incubator art/science/technology program.
I taught a "How to work with editors" workshop for the Griffin Museum of Photography
I developed a lecture/panel series called "Poetics of the Lab" for the Simons Presents lectures. The talks should be underway sometime this year--I will update once a date is set.
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NOTE:
I hope this newsletter can reclaim space from social media, and allow for a deeper conversation. I'm still on IG @rebeccahorne600, mostly to keep up to date with other artists.