March 29 – May 1, 2025
Interstitial Agency
Curated by Lauren Bradshaw
Artists’ Talk and Reception: Saturday, March 29, 4-6 PM, 2025
ATHICA’s Spring 2025 exhibition Interstitial Agency presents the visceral work of six artists united by the vision of curator Lauren Bradshaw: Heather Baumbach of Huntsville, Alabama; Brooke Day of Johnson City, Tennessee; Huan LaPlante of Asheville, North Carolina; Sam Shamard, of Florence, Texas; Jessica Swank of Greenville, South Carolina; and Theo Trotter of Chicago, Illinois. Working with materials as varied as resin, thread, human hair, deer bones, clay, silicone, and kombucha SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), the works in the exhibition inhabit the intersection of materiality and corporeality, utilizing the fragmented, extended, damaged, and repaired body to depict ideas of autonomy and resilience.
Curator Bradshaw states: “The works vary in their degree of abstraction but all ultimately allude to organs, skin, bones, hair, or clothing. Cyclical themes of growth and decay or damage and mending are present throughout the work both conceptually and materially. A palette of bruises, blood, scabs, and other abject references break the boundary between the internal and external body. Many of the soft forms among these works are complemented by their surfaces which often reference skin as a repository of haptic memory. Social constructs of identity and intersectionality ultimately permeate the conceptual content of these works as they are representative of our human materiality.”
The artists and curator will take part in a conversation about the exhibition followed by a reception starting at 4:00 PM on Saturday, March 29, 2025. All are invited to attend.
The exhibition results from ATHICA’s Annual Call for Entries, which provides opportunities for individual artists and curators to exhibit their work at ATHICA and its satellite location, ATHICA@Ciné.
About the Artists
Heather Baumbach – Huntsville, Alabama
Heather’s work is inspired by her relationship with the physical body. She is devoted to working with her hands, creating works notable for their deft finish and tactile nature. Her visual art has been exhibited at MassMOCA, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, The Wiregrass Museum of Art, The Gadsden Museum of Art, The Georgine Clark Alabama Artists Gallery, The Charles W. and Norma C. Carroll Gallery at Marshall University and Revolve Gallery, Asheville, NC. In addition to art shows in Alabama, she has participated in juried festivals and exhibitions in South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Florida, West Virginia and Missouri. She also holds over 30 years of design and production experience in stage, television, and film, her credits including The Cherry Lane Theatre, The Theater Outlet, The Santa Fe Opera, The Los Angeles Opera, Maine State Music Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Carsey-Warner Productions and Comedy Central. Heather holds a BFA in Costume Design from UNCSA and an MFA in Visual Art from Lesley University. She is currently an adjunct instructor in both art and theater at The University of Alabama Huntsville.
CV: Baumbach CV 3.2.25 | website: www.HeatherBaumbachArt.com | IG: @heatherbaumbachart
Brooke Day – Johnson City, Tennessee
Brooke Day is an interdisciplinary artist using diverse materials and modalities to create enchanted-replication installations, experimental sculptures, and multimedia fictive-bio arts. As a queer, female-presenting person, Day seeks to shed light on alternative perspectives, advocating for personal autonomy and social evolution. Day earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from East Tennessee State University and a Master of Fine Arts at Clemson University. Day currently works as an Adjunct Professor and Curatorial Fellow at East Tennessee State University and is a founding member of the artist group Zero Space Collective. Day’s sculptures have recently been displayed at Union Gallery in Huntsville, Al, Goodall Gallery in Columbia, SC, and KCKCC in Kansas City, KS.
CV: DayBrooke_CV_ATHICA_2025| website: www.brookeday.art | IG: @brookewday
Huan Vida LaPlante – Asheville, North Carolina
Huan grew up on the beaches of North Carolina with an appreciation for art passed down from their mother and grandmother. They graduated from UNC Asheville in 2018 with a BFA in painting and an Undergraduate Research Award for their solo thesis exhibition, “Historically Apathetic.” After graduating, they attended artist residencies at Penland School of Craft and Chateau d’Orquevaux, expanding into written word. In addition to poetry and watercolor, Huan now experiments with a range of ephemeral materials such as charcoal, repurposed fabrics, and handmade recycled paper. Interested in the human condition and the impermanence of self, their works have notably been shown at the VAE Biennial, the AXA Art Prize in New York, and their MFA thesis show at Clemson University, “REFIGURING: reclamation of self and space.”
CV: LaPlante Academic CV | website: huanlaplante.com | IG: @huannieo
Sam Shamard – Florence, Texas
Sam Shamard is a mixed Mexican American artist from Austin, Texas. She received her MFA at Clemson University, in Clemson, South Carolina and her BFA in Art Education at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. Sam was a 2023 Penland Winter Fellow, and her work has been exhibited widely in galleries and museums across the country. She most recently has exhibited with the George Washington Carver Museum in Austin, Texas and the American Museum of Ceramic Arts in Pomona, California. She is faculty and Art Education Program Coordinator at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas.
CV: CV 2025| website: samshamard.com | IG: @sam_shamard
Jessica Swank – Greenville, South Carolina
Jessica Swank is an interdisciplinary artist, currently based in Greenville, SC. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, at galleries such as Millepiani in Rome, Italy, Plexus Projects in Brooklyn, NY, and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA) in Gimpo, South Korea. She has been recognized by Musée Magazine’s “Woman Crush Wednesday,” Fraction Magazine, and Porridge Magazine.
Swank is a founding member and Marketing Director of Zero Space Collective, a contemporary artist collective with a network across the Eastern US. Zero Space strives to make space for under-represented artists and serve as an equitable and accessible resource. Since its founding in 2020, Swank has assisted in developing the collective as well as curating and organizing exhibitions and digital promotions for artists.
Swank earned her MFA from Clemson University in Visual Arts and BA from Anderson University. An artist and educator, Swank has taught and led numerous classes, workshops and panel discussions across the Southeast. She has gained funding for her work from a number of local institutions, including the South Carolina Arts Commission. Swank is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Gallery Coordinator at the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University.
CV: Swank_CV 2025 formatted | website: www.jessicaswank.art | IG: @jessicawswank
Theo Trotter – Chicago, Illinois
Theo Trotter earned his BA in studio art from Bard College in 2015. Currently, he is based in Chicago, where he is pursuing his MFA in fiber and material studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work references the trans body as a palimpsest, through the marks of transformation and trauma that manifest on it. It deals with the idea of transformation as a necessary and transcendent, but simultaneously painful experience by utilizing the tension between beautiful and disgusting visual elements. This conflict between attraction and repulsion also represents injury and healing. He addresses visceral bodily experiences at the point where language begins to fail, dealing with, among other things, physical harm to the body, and the injury of forced femininity.
He explores textiles as a second skin on the body which records the history of the wearer. What many of his materials have in common is pliability and fragility that mimics the flesh. Touch is an essential part of his process and remains visible in the work as imprints in the materials. He is always in conversation with the materials, at once injuring or harming them, and allowing their nature to shape the work. Recent work has involved techniques including weaving and bobbin lace making.
CV: 2025_Trotter_T_Resume| website: theotrotter.com | IG: @theotrotter
About the Curator
Lauren Bradshaw – Wilmington, Delaware
Lauren Bradshaw has a background as an artist and received a BA in studio art from the University of North Georgia in 2019 and an MFA in ceramics from Clemson University in 2021. She is currently in her final semester as a master’s student in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware where she focuses on the relationship between eighteenth-century needlework practices and social constructs of femininity. In conjunction with her historical research, her own studio practice has gradually shifted from ceramics to textiles, and her most recent body of work integrates found objects of cultural significance with materials and processes commonly and historically associated with the labor of women. She has recently shown these embroidered works at galleries in New York, Philadelphia, and across the Southeast as well as curated exhibitions in New York and Chicago. After graduation from the Winterthur Program in May, she plans to pursue curatorial work at an art museum.
CV: Bradshaw_CV_AIC | website: LAURENBRADSHAWART.COM | IG: @laurenbradshawart
Interstitial Agency is sponsored in part by The James E. and Betty J. Huffer Foundation, The Georgia Council for the Arts, and The National Endowment for the Arts.
Press Release: https://mailchi.mp/athica/interstitial_agency
Catalog: