Reed Schick (American, b. 1997) is a photographer and creative director who recently relocated to Knoxville from Chattanooga. During 2020’s Covid-19 “stay at home” orders, Schick began documenting families inside their homes in his own neighborhood of St. Elmo. His project then grew into the Pandemic Portraits project documenting families in the Glass Street neighborhood in partnership with the Glass House Collective. Schick began his work by inviting a videographer to join him and capture answers to a single question: how does the pandemic make you feel? Families posed for their portrait on porches or through windows and shared their answers. Schick continued this work documenting refugee families from Africa and South America living in Brainerd in partnership with Bridge Refugee Services, Inc. of Chattanooga.
Home/ is the inaugural exhibition of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at UTC, and highlights artmaking in our city that celebrates a sense of community and awareness to place. The exhibition expands ideas of “home” through 12 artists with a direct connection to Chattanooga, with artwork made between 1995-2020 and ranging from drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and video.
The circumstances and challenges of the prior year called into question how one defines, documents, and reinforces a unique sense of place—relationally, socially, geographically, and politically: from the rapid physical shrinking of direct social circles due to quarantine and “stay at home” orders, to creating new online communities through digital tools, to monitoring our impact on and reconsidering relationships with our region’s land, and by recalling domestic spaces—both imagined and real—as places for creative abandon and protection.
The artists in Home/ approach these realities from their individual viewpoints unique to our city and region: topics range from the most personal and intimate first-hand experiences, to more universal questions addressing our innate human desires for connection, mobility, mark-making, and representation.
-Rachel Reese
Through Glass, 2020
Produced by Glass House Collective. Directed by Reed Schick. DP + Editor Davy Granberry.
