To Cultivate a magnolia: Pink Gallery
July 15th - September 11th
Riley Goodman
2022 marks my eighth year living in Richmond, Virginia- four spent in undergrad at VCUarts, and now four as an emerging artist. I never imagined the impact that coming of age in this city would afford me. Richmond became a shelter to take refuge in as I endured the universally difficult journey of leaving my childhood home for the first time. To live in Richmond, a city alive with its own history, is to be surrounded by generations who called it home before me. Glints of afternoon sunlight create movie-like sets in hundred-year-old apartment buildings, jazz music radiates from an indiscernible car, someone’s initials have been carved into your basement door- everything brushes the threshold of reality and fiction, our present only a continuation of the movie the city has been directing for over three hundred years. It is the almost indescribable everyday magic of Richmond that has allowed me to become the photographer and person I am today. “To Cultivate a Magnolia”, an ongoing series, examines the folklore and history of Richmond and greater Virginia, the endurance of the American Civil War, and the complicated, dreamy journey of one’s coming of age.
The Old Dominion (2022) - Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,800
Cruel Summer (2020) - Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,800
Remembrances on a Parlor Wall (2017) - Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,200
SOLD The Angel of Hollywood, Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”
To Cultivate a Magnolia (2022) - Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,800
Forever at the Windows (2020), Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,200
Sundown at Poplar Vale (2021), Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,200
Virginia Dare (2020), Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,800
The Park Sparrow (2022) - Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $2,300 (Sold as a pair)
The Butcher Cat (2022) - Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $2,300 (Sold as a pair)
Fair Weather Soon (2020) - Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,200
The Stag (2022), Archival Pigment Print, 16x24”, $1,800
Riley Goodman, raised in the Patapsco River Valley of Maryland, inquires folklore, American history, and humankind's relation to the environments they inhabit in an effort to understand what endures, and how this manifests through the passage of time. Goodman juxtaposes the visual interpretation of researched, often folk-based, storytelling with archival imagery and material from his personal collections of artifact and ephemera. When combined, the work depicts a narrative that rather than noting a specific period, creates an ever-occurring understanding of history. By establishing this crafted world, Goodman invites the viewer to question tenets of authenticity, leaving the idea of 'historical truth' in an undisclosed middle ground.