WILLIAM TONEY and TRAE VENERABLE
William Toney uses photography and mixed media to document and abstract his lived experience. Personal, familial, and local environments become key components in compositions focused on culture from an individualized perspective. Toney creates still life’s from objects he finds in the street, retired flowers, his old clothes, etc. A former business in the limbo of abandonment becomes the subject of a chronological series. In other series, serial photographs of car wash vacuums and air pumps, or sun visors behind car windshields rely on text and background information to define the types of communities they are captured within, drawing attention to the different needs or values subtly advertised. In Toney’s work repurposing, repositioning, and the shifting of hierarchies attempts to reclaim power by demanding to be seen in a different context.
Trae Q. L. Venerable’s work comes from his life story. The images, tools, and inspiration all shaped: Threading it Together. The collection brings several types of elements to present to the viewer an experience unlike any other. Bringing his side of the story from the roots of deep ranching and farming. The works in the exhibit show the west in a new light.
