THE FOCUS

"My work inhabits the intersection of photography and sculpture, approaching the photograph and its usages as image, object, and intermediary. I search for meaning in disparates of source, subject, and application of materials, sounds, and environments, and seek to propose new relationships between social, political, and personal mythologies to develop alternative understandings of the banal and the spiritual. My work responds to questions surrounding masculinity, digital and physical bodily experience, and the tools that produce ritual, narrative, and simulacrum within...

"From the data existing within an image, the mass production of objects used in creating installations, or perhaps, moments that shape our memory--I am interested in the malleability of pieces that create a whole. Using a variety of media I embrace repetition to create bodies of work that explore boredom, memory, and various sociopolitical concepts of a contemporary media age." — Toni Collums Roberts, Statement Toni Collums Roberts, Studio Visit, 2019 (photo: Tracy Treadwell) Toni Collums Roberts, Studio Visit, 2019 (photo:...

Rachel Bubis: You explain how your experience with hearing loss gave you insight into the “structural aspects of communication,” particularly in how you relate the language of sound and color in your paintings.  Brianna Bass: The relationship between color and sound first became apparent to me when I started making the vertical prism paintings. I sensed something musical about them, and realized that they remind me of piano keys. Each color plays a specific role in a larger system, and...