In Defense

Last Thursday was the First Thursday show for the graduating MFA class. Seven bodies of work hung in the Cota Street Gallery that are as diverse in approach and subject matter as they are in execution and personal style. It is a show that seems to marry these eclectic images with grace, courage, and infinite beauty.

Today I was privileged to sit in on the project defense of one of these bodies of work. It was my goal to experience a defense, to learn more about this work, and to support my friend. I was not ready for the grace, poise, introspection, and courage of the presentation. It was stunning. In some ways I felt like I was out of place, though in truth the defense had been classified as "open." But I am so glad to have been there, to have seen that the defense is not something to be feared or anxious about, but rather to be embraced as another opportunity to reveal a layer about the work. Something precious and imperative.

The work has always been stunning to me, as Bradshaw himself has been something of an enigma in my time at Brooks. For me, he evolved from instructor to mentor to employer to classmate to colleague to friend. The personal nature of his work, married with the incredible technical skill employed in its creation, has been a great inspiration for my own work. There is a symbiotic relationship between the meticulous crafting of his tiny rooms in heaven and who he is as a photographer, an individual. In a similar way, I find myself craving the tactile manipulation of my work and am more fulfilled when I have interacted with the materials, created the mythology, and visually constructed my own temperamental ideology.

It was one of my greatest honors being in that room today. It remains a great honor to be counted amongst the friends of such an artist. And it was a journey of discovery and wonder watching the stoic instructor from my early career at Brooks peel off the layers of his persona to ultimately reveal something so elemental and raw. In some ways it is an evolution I cannot mimic, as I may as well have cut my veins and bled upon the page from the beginning. His reserved and perfect demeanor has been carefully cultivated to the point that this type of revelation, this emergence from the depths, is something of a miracle in and of itself. And it is one in which I can truthfully say the real and achingly beautiful Robert Sky Bradshaw has been honestly revealed.

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