art photography

This nontraditional student puts the focus on others through her photography

Shayla Brown — Mon, 15 May 2023 17:15:51 +0000

This nontraditional student puts the focus on others through her photography Shayla Brown Mon, 05/15/2023 - 13:15

Sisc Johnson in front of some of her photography. Photo by Cristian Torres.

Sisc Johnson, a ��AV School of Art student and staff member, will be the first in her family to graduate from college this May.

“My parents never graduated high school,” said Johnson. “[My siblings and I] were in and out of foster homes, and we were always raised to believe that college wasn't an option for us. It wasn’t until I started working at Mason, that I discovered I actually could go to college.”

Johnson, who started at Mason as the business manager of Student Centers in 2008, began taking nondegree classes. Her determination to earn a degree, coupled with her discovery of Mason’s employee tuition benefit, led her to enroll in the BFA in photography with Art and Visual Technology (AVT) program in 2018.

“I originally went into the interdisciplinary studies degree program and one of my first classes was a photography class, with Sue Wrbican. She was amazing and it completely changed my trajectory,” Johnson said.

Johnson was very active in the Writing for Artists course during the pandemic, said course instructor Heather Green.

“Sissy was great because when we were all doing class from our houses, it could be a little bit demoralizing, but she would always bring her unique perspective, her insights and humor, and kick off the conversation,” said Green, an assistant professor in Mason’s School of Art.

Although her parents never finished high school, Johnson understood the value of a degree and encouraged her two daughters to go to college, and both earned degrees—at Lewis and Clark College and University of Virginia—as their mother pursued hers part-time while working full-time.

“We’re so lucky to have Sisc, one of our most dynamic students, bringing her business experience and art knowledge to her new position in School of Art,” Green said.

Johnson, who also teaches photography at Stepping Stones, a treatment program for court-involved boys, age 14 to 18, often incorporates social justice into her artwork.

“Every year I take cameras over there and teach art as a way of expressing what's going on and expose them to Mason. Hopefully they [will see that they] can go to college too."

Her projects on the prison systems and prison reform are inspired by loved ones who are in and out of incarceration, said Johnson, similar to how her projects on women’s rights tie back to her personal experience of being a woman who grew up in the foster care system of rural Tennessee and dealing with many gender inequalities.

Johnson, who now works for the School of Art as the business and operations manager, has several projects featured on her personal portfolio website.

“I don't like talking about my experiences very much, so I focus on others,” she explained. “One of my last projects ‘Lost in America’ was about undocumented members of our community and the abuses that they suffer.

“I've been at 7-Eleven photographing them, and somebody will drive up in a truck that says ‘Build the wall’ on the bumper. Those things really enrage me.”

Bobby Yi, assistant director at the School of Art and the interim director for painting and drawing, has been Johnsons’ academic adviser throughout her career.

“Sissy is pretty freaking amazing,” Yi said. “That challenge of having to juggle so much is humongous, and it speaks volumes about her personality and what she's willing to give for her family and for other students.”

“There's been so many times that my peers at Mason all show up for me when I need them, and they all motivate me,” said Johnson.

“One thing about Mason is that everybody has an opportunity to make their dreams come true here, and Sissy is the embodiment of that,” Yi said. “She deserves all the accolades that she could get.”

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Heather Green

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Sue Wrbican

admin_alpha — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:27:01 +0000

Sue Wrbican admin_alpha Tue, 10/20/2015 - 19:27

Full Professor, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Phone: 703-993-8570
Campus: Fairfax
Building: Art and Design Building
Room 2050D
Mail Stop: 1C3

Email: swrbican@gmu.edu

Personal Websites

Sue Wrbican

Biography

Professor Wrbican has an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh. Her studio is located in the Monroe Street Market Arts Walk in Washington, D.C. Wrbican is currently Director of the Photography program.

Wrbican’s work is informed by her life’s history including work in a steel mill at Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation in the late 70’s to employment at Morgan Stanley in first five years of the millennium. With regard to her interests in philosophy and literature she creates situations from mining narrative within unique experiences.

Her site specific sculptures referencing the work of Surrealist painter Kay Sage will be installed at the Seligmann Center in Sugar Loaf, NY in the fall 2015 as part of a walking tour providing material for a new photographic experimental documentary project “The Eventual Outcome of an Instant.”

In 2014, she presented her sculptural work project “Continue the Temporary and It Becomes Forever” at the Zizek Studies conference at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning. Her article about this work was published in The International Journal of Zizek Studies in 2015. As an artist in residence at Robert Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida where she collaborated extensively with acrobat Arnaud Caizergues on the hurricane-damaged beaches of North Captiva Island. Images of this work will be published in the fall 2015 edition of So To Speak-A Feminist Journal of Language and Art.

Wrbican was an Associate Artist with Rineke Dijkstra at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida in 2009 funded by a grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation Residency Fellowship. In 2008, she completed a 4-year collaborative project with Mary Carothers entitled “The Frozen Car” at Michigan Technological University funded through a Mathy Fellowship and research grant from ��AV. In January 2007 Wrbican exhibited “The Impala Diaries” at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Her video work has been screened in various venues such as WNET 13’s “Reel New York,” “The World Wide Video Festival” in Amsterdam, “Artists’ Television Access” in San Francisco, The Midnight Special Bookstore’s “Documental,” in Los Angeles, “The Avignon Film Festival” at the Alliance Francaise, NYC, NY and HEMPHILL Presents “SATELLITE: Workingman Collective” in Washington, DC. From 1997-1999 she was a video Artist In Residence at Experiements in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) working with Billy Kluver and Juli Martin on a series of films entitled “9 evenings: theatre and engineering” documenting the 1966 performances of Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, David Tudor and Yvonne Rainer among others. She worked closely with Robert Whitman to compose historical film footage of his 1960 performance American Moon.

Professor Wrbican works collaboratively on numerous projects with the internationally recognized DC based art organization Floating Lab Collective, whose work has been exhibited at various venues such as the Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York City, MDE11 in Medellin, Colombia and the 5×5 Public Art Project for the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities. She has delivered presentations on these projects at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, NH and the Society for Photographic Education, 2014 National Conference in Baltimore, MD. Images of her photographic work “Scream at the Economy” with Floating Lab Collective are published in Global Activism, Peter Weibel, editor, MIT Press, forthcoming 2015.

Degrees:

MFA, Photography, Rhode Island School of Design

Rahshia Linendoll-Sawyer

admin_alpha — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:24:01 +0000

Rahshia Linendoll-Sawyer admin_alpha Tue, 10/20/2015 - 19:24

Adjunct Faculty, School of Art, CVPA

MFA Photography, 2014 (alumna)

Contact Information

Phone: 703-993-8898
Campus: Fairfax
Building: 2050 Art and Design Building
Mail Stop: 1C3

Email: rlinendo@gmu.edu

Personal Websites

Visit Rahshia Linendoll-Sawyer's Website

Biography

Rahshia Sawyer is a conceptual photographer based in the Washington DC area. She was the 2012 recipient of the Contemporary Talents award from France’s François Schneider Foundation. Exhibited in the 2012 Inaugural Dublin Biennial, her photographs and installations have been included in numerous group shows in Canada, Ireland, England, France and United States. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, François Schneider Foundation and the Radford University Museum. More recently she was a 2015 Trawick semi-finalist and received honorable mention at the 2015 Fine Art Photography Awards. She received her MFA from ��AV in Virginia, and her BFA at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington DC. Her current projects examine relationships between beauty and humanity and its balanced (or imbalanced) interaction between reality and fantasy.

Degrees

MFA, Art and Visual Technology, ��AV

Specialist Areas:

Digital Photography
Professional Practices

Xang Ho

admin_alpha — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:24:01 +0000

Xang Ho admin_alpha Tue, 10/20/2015 - 19:24

Adjunct Faculty, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Phone: 703-993-8898
Campus: Fairfax
Building: Art and Design Building
Room 2050
Mail Stop: 1C3

Email: xho2@gmu.edu

Personal Websites

Visit Xang Ho's Website

Biography

Xang Mimi Ho is a fashion photographer in the Virginia area as well as an adjunct professor at ��AV. Ho received her Bachelor of Fine Art from ��AV, Fairfax, Virginia, and her Master of Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Arts, Baltimore, Maryland. Her artwork explores themes of identity and social issues.

Ho is a 2005 VSA Emerging Young Artists Program First Place winner and participated in the 2015 EYA retrospective exhibit Focus Forward at the Kennedy Center. She is a practicing fashion photographer, and her photographs are included in two published books; “Portrait from The Pike”: A Celebration of Community and “Living Diversity”: The Columbia Pike Documentary Project.”

Degrees

MFA, Photography & Digital Imaging, Maryland Institute College of Art
BFA, ��AV

Specialist Areas:

Lighting and Photography
Fashion Photographer
Art Director
Portraiture
Fine Art Photography
Identity Narrative

Kelly Carr

admin_alpha — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:24:01 +0000

Kelly Carr admin_alpha Tue, 10/20/2015 - 19:24

Adjunct Faculty, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Phone: 703-993-8898
Campus: Fairfax
Building: Art and Design Building
Room 2050
Mail Stop: 1C3
Email: kcarr22@gmu.edu

Biography

Artist, professor, and commercial photographer. I have taught in the D.C. and Virginia area for over 20 years. As an artist, among others, I have shown at the National Museum of American History, IA & A at Hillyer and Pyramid Atlantic Art Center. I am an active commercial photographer in the D.C. metropolitan area, Northern California, and Southwest U.S. shooting athletes and sports apparel for location shooting, website, and catalog.

Degree:

MFA, Photography, George Washington University

Specialist Areas:

Fine Art Photography
Commercial Photography
Portrait Photography
Documentary Photography
Sports and Athletics Photography
Travel Photography

Stephanie Benassi

admin_alpha — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:24:01 +0000

Stephanie Benassi admin_alpha Tue, 10/20/2015 - 19:24

Assistant Professor, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Phone: 703-993-8898
Campus: Fairfax
Building: Art and Design Building
Room 2050
Mail Stop: 1C3

Personal Websites

See Stephanie Benassi's Website

Biography

Stephanie Benassi is a conceptual artist working primarily with photography. She uses photographic images and processes to conceptually engage the contradictions, limitations, and material conditions inherent to the photographic medium. Specific research, travel, and tactile experimentation are developed into gallery installations that incorporate a range of materials and methods including documentary photographs, chemical process-based works, collages, and sculptural elements that together create complex visual and material experiences. Her work draws from a diverse photographic vocabulary and an engagement with the medium’s various historical trajectories in genres such as landscape, forensics, Victorian memento mori, occult, and camera-less photography. Through these diverse refences, materials, and stylistic elements, Benassi investigates the ways in which the material conditions and specialized languages of the photographic medium shape our relations to history, power, and the production of images.

Benassi’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach, VA), New Image Gallery at James Madison University (Harrisonburg, VA), The Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery at Broward College (FL), Eckhaus Gallery at Kutztown University (Kutztown, PA), Julio Fine Arts Gallery at Loyola University (Baltimore, MD), Full Circle Gallery (Baltimore, MD), Gallery B (Bethesda, MD), Decker Gallery at Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD) and 1708 Gallery (Richmond, VA). She was selected as a finalist for the 2020 New Waves exhibition at Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and the 2019 Bethesda Urban Partnership’s Trawick Prize. She was a semi-finalist for the Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize in 2014 and in 2015. Her art work has been featured on Artworks “Pop-Up Exhibitions” for Maryland Public Television / PBS. She has participated in artist residencies including Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Creative Center for the Arts. Benassi holds an MFA in Photography and Film from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA in photography from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

With over a decade of instruction at ��AV, Benassi has taught a wide range of studio courses and seminars, including beginning and advanced digital and darkroom photography, introduction to New Media, Professional Practices, and Visual Thinking. Benassi’s approach to instruction is akin to a creative think-tank, in which technical understanding is developed in order to compliment the growth of each student artist’s individual creative identity, provide an ethical dimension to their engagement with media, and foster conceptual thinking necessary in pursuit of creative solutions to problems. In addition to teaching at GMU, Benassi has taught courses in photography and time-based media at Virginia Commonwealth University.

She is currently based in Linden, VA where she lives with her husband and son.

Degrees:

MFA, Photography and Film, Virginia Commonwealth University

Specialist Areas:

Alternative Photo Processes
Darkroom Photography
Digital Photography
New Media in Creative Arts
Visual Thinking

art photography

This nontraditional student puts the focus on others through her photography

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In This Story

Apply to the Program!

Learn more about the School of Art

Read More Graduation Stories

Sue Wrbican

Contact Information

Personal Websites

Biography

Degrees:

Rahshia Linendoll-Sawyer

Contact Information

Personal Websites

Biography

Degrees

Specialist Areas:

Xang Ho

Contact Information

Personal Websites

Biography

Degrees

Specialist Areas:

Kelly Carr

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Biography

Degree:

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Stephanie Benassi

Contact Information

Personal Websites

Biography

Degrees:

Specialist Areas: