VC Projects

We are pleased to share that the exhibition, “Photography Into Sculpture an homage and an update” curated by L. Mikelle Standbridge has been extended through Saturday, June 6, 2026 We look forward to welcoming you and sharing this unique exhibition experience. By appointment [email protected] El Nido by VC Projects, Melrose Hill #art #slowlooking #photography #objects #sculpture

A work from my personal art collection. Featured artist: Ragnheiður GuðmundsdóttirFlekka (100% Icelandic Wool), A Reflection on MemoriesFelted Icelandic wool Currently on display in Sewing My Way Through the Dark — a group exhibition for the visually impaired at Casa Regis: Center for Culture and Contemporary Art, Italy. Rooted in memories of summers spent on her grandparents’ farm in northern Iceland, Guðmundsdóttir’s work reflects a deep connection to animals, landscape, and material memory. Working with raw Icelandic wool — both the coarse, weather-resistant Tog fibers and the soft insulating Þel undercoat — the artist transforms felting into a meditative and restorative process. The scent, texture, and tactility of the wool reconnect the artist to childhood experiences among sheep and stables, while the unpredictable nature of the material itself becomes part of the work’s quiet beauty. The wool used in this piece comes from a small flock in Snæfellsnes, Iceland, where the artist now lives beneath the Snæfellsjökull glacier. #FiberArt #TextileArt #IcelandicWool #CasaRegis #ContemporaryArt Felting MaterialMemory SewingMyWayOutOfTheDark

After completing my recent close reading schedule this past winter with @enclosedwithin , I found myself drawn to revisit an old book that quietly came to mind while reflecting on objects, relativity, planets, the universe, enlightenment, and our ongoing search for purpose within the world we live in. I returned to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams — first published in 1979 after beginning as a BBC radio series in 1978 — a book I hadn’t read in over thirty years. What once seemed playful and absurd now feels different: part satire, part philosophical meditation on uncertainty, perception, systems, and the strange choreography of existence itself. Returning to it now felt unexpectedly relevant, humorous, and contemplative all at once. Some books patiently wait for us to become different readers. #HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy #DouglasAdams #EnclosureAcademy #Literature #CloseReading ScienceFiction Reading Contemplation Philosophy CreativeThinking Books ArtAndLiterature ExistentialHumor

Interview with Fabiola Ubani Artist in the exhibition Photography Into Sculpture — an homage and an update at El NIDO by VC Projects, Los Angeles  through June 6. Pictured here: In Echo of (Our) Absence (2025) Photography on glass, multiple exposure, unique, 10 × 8 inches Fabiola Ubani invites us into a space where intimacy lingers as trace rather than form — where what is no longer present continues to resonate. The work unfolds quietly: a bed becomes landscape, branches map unseen connections, and fragile materials hold the weight of memory. Moving between the personal and the symbolic, the installation asks us to reconsider absence not as loss, but as something that endures — an echo that persists within the body, the object, and the space itself. Q1 — In Echo of (Our) Absence, the bed becomes more than a domestic object. What drew you to use the bed as a central image? Fabiola: “The bed, a piece of everyday furniture, interests me precisely because of its ambiguous condition: it is both object and place. A space where things happen, where intimate encounters take place, and where a relational dimension unfolds in which words lose relevance in favor of gestures, caresses, and the contact of skin. I am also drawn to its aesthetic. Disheveled sheets generate forms that evoke a kind of cartography: maps of desire, but also of forgetting. In the absence of bodies, those folds and traces become silent witnesses to what has occurred, quiet vestiges of a past experience. Paraphrasing Roland Barthes, they contain that ‘ça-a-été’ — that-has-been — which inevitably points to memory. For years, in my travels, I have photographed unmade beds — beds in which I have slept, loved, inhabited. For me, they constitute an intimate diary: surfaces upon which lived experience is inscribed and which condense a strong emotional and personal charge.” @fabiolaubani @vc_projects #FabiolaUbani #PhotographyIntoSculpture #ElNido #VCProjects #Photography ContemporaryPhotography PhotographyAsObject GlassArt InstallationArt ContemporaryArt Memory RolandBarthes ArtistInterview

I’m pleased to be participating as a reviewer for Exposure Portfolio Reviews 2026 with the Los Angeles Center of Photography (@la_centerofphoto ). Exposure brings together photographers, curators, publishers, gallerists, and industry professionals for thoughtful online portfolio reviews and meaningful conversations around photography, process, and creative practice. I’m looking forward to engaging with artists and learning more about the evolving directions within contemporary image-making. 📅 September 30 – October 2, 2026 💻 Online Portfolio Reviews Early Bird registration for LACP Members opens Tuesday, May 19 at 10 AM PT. Exposure offers artists and creatives an online platform to share their portfolios and receive feedback from an international group of professionals working across photography and the arts. Learn more via Los Angeles Center of Photography #Exposure2026 #LACP #LosAngelesCenterofPhotography #PortfolioReview #Photography ContemporaryPhotography

Villa Emma 6 am 2025, Italy What I came to realize while at Villa Emma was that I was fully present within the moments that ultimately shaped these compositions. The concept emerged quietly — the sheets already waiting in a cabinet that Mikelle had thoughtfully left for my arrival at the villa last summer. Although I have visited Villa Emma many times through my ongoing work with Mikelle, this experience unfolded differently. It took a particular Friday at 6 a.m., between sessions of Transcendental Meditation, for something to fully align and reveal itself. In that stillness, I found myself able to dwell more deeply within the villa’s atmosphere — its history, legacy, contents, and the unbounded vibrations that seem to move through the space. What the photographs ultimately reveal is only one part of the creative process. There is also the reflection and contemplation that follows — the quiet consideration of what just occurred while moving within a state of creative flow. Not everything needs to be overanalyzed in order to follow a thread of inquiry. Sometimes it is enough to remain exploratory, open, and willing to collaborate with the laws of nature itself. This, to me, is part of what can emerge from retreating into a unique country, a distilled mountain village, and a villa that remains open to interpretation. My relationship with Villa Emma continues to evolve year after year; each visit reveals another dimension and invites me to go deeper into myself. -@vcprojects #VillaEmma #CreativeProcess #ArtistRetreat #Italy #Photography Contemplation CreativeFlow ArtAndNature VCProjects ElNido

Recently, artist and curator Roberta Toscano shared with me details surrounding her current project in Italy, NATALINA E GLI ALTRI—an exhibition centered on war and collective memory, installed within a former World War II air-raid shelter. What struck me most was her curatorial decision to place the work inside a space already carrying emotional and historical weight. The shelter itself becomes part of the exhibition: a site tied to fear, survival, protection, and human vulnerability. Roberta spoke about the importance of allowing art to move beyond the “white cube” and into spaces connected to lived experience, where viewers are invited to encounter the work emotionally rather than academically. The project becomes less about “understanding” contemporary art and more about experiencing humanity through it. I continue to reflect on how certain spaces shape not only the way we view art, but the way we feel it. — Victoria Chapman #RobertaToscano #ContemporaryArt #SiteSpecificArt #CuratorialPractice #InstallationArt ArtAndHumanity IndependentCurator Italy SocialPractice ORBIS ElNidoByVCProjects

In 1970, Photography into Sculpture opened at MoMA and sparked a debate about what a photograph could be. Fifty-six years later, El Nido by VC Projects in Los Angeles is asking that question again. 📷 Writer Coral Pereda Serras reviews "Photography Into Sculpture: An Homage and An Update" — on view through May 16. Link in bio. #ElNido #LAArt #ArtAndCake #Photography #ContemporaryArt

Oona Hyland, 2026, “Little One” Unique Toned Cyanotype on ceramic jug | 8 inches PART IIl Interview with Oona Hyland The Jug as Symbol Q: The jug, as a vessel, carries associations of the domestic and the body. In your work, does it hold, protect, or perhaps conceal what is attached to it? OONA: The jug is a potent symbol, it’s been in my mind since I saw the painting :The Servant girl at Emmaus by Velazquez many years ago. The jug is a potent symbol. It denotes service, it’s a domestic object and very much a female one. Of course ceramic jugs are made of clay and clay is of the land, so much conflict is land based, property based. So here is this object, a container of meaning. But my jug is empty and the images are bound to it with fragile threads in the process of making them. The threads ,as in the rest of the Active Forgetting works, symbolise the laundry. The servitude the women experienced and continue to experience, and the fragility of human life. I’m interested in the way focus relates to these three dimensional objects- where they are bound tightly the image is clear and where they are loose the focus softens and leaves traces, all this fascinates me. In this way memory and experience are evoked. Q: Finally, what does it mean for this work to exist as a singular object? How does that sense of uniqueness relate to memory, trace, and presence for you? OONA: This is new to me, I usually work in multiples. The sense of uniqueness, of memory and trace does evoke presence in this work. It is just one jug. One world. But there is a whole galaxy of others waiting to be made, shown, considered, expressed. This is just one “Little One”. #art #ceramic #symbol #oonahyland #q&a @oonahyland @casa_regis_art @el_nido_project @vc_projects

A recent class with Enclosure Academy, led by Stacie Vos and Jeffrey Stuker, focused on close reading of Orlando by Virginia Woolf. It opened into something much larger—layered reflections on time, nature, identity, and the role of the biographer. As a curator, writer, and artist, I was especially drawn to Woolf’s fluid treatment of time and transformation—how narrative itself becomes a living structure, shifting alongside the conditions of being. There is so much within Orlando—passages on age, transition, class, and the quiet forces that shape us within both nature and society. Grateful for the depth, care, and insight shared throughout. If you’re looking to bring more literary influence into your practice—whether from medieval texts or contemporary modernism—I highly recommend exploring Enclosure Academy and the courses led by Stacie Vos and Jeffrey Stuker. Their approach to close reading is both rigorous and expansive—attending not only to what is written, but how and why it was written, along with the layers of influence and the quiet mysteries that unfold along the way. If you haven’t read Orlando, I recommend it. If you have, read it again ❤️ @virginiawoolfsociety @bookcradle @enclosedwithin @jeffrey_stuker #art #writing #thinking #reflection #reading

Oona Hyland, 2026, “Little One” Unique Toned Cyanotype on ceramic jug | 8 inches PART II Interview with Oona Hyland On the base of Oona Hyland’s jug “Little One” is a portrait of a boy. In this segment we learn it’s significance, bringing more insight to this fascinating work. Q: The figure of the “Little One,” from a Victorian glass negative of an unknown boy, feels both specific and anonymous. What drew you to this image, and how does it function within the emotional landscape of the work? Oona: “Little One” has several connotations. This single work comes after a series of larger jugs I exhibited at Photography into Sculpture at Casa Regis but this one was made especially for this exhibition and to my mind is a distillation of those several larger pieces. The figure of the Victorian child is representative of all the ‘little ones’ lost at Tuam ( 796 bodies discovered in a sewage area adjacent to the home in 2013) My brother survived and my mother was able to reclaim him (after marrying my father) . The image of the anonymous Little One is on the base of the jug. This renders him invisible, physically and metaphorically - as in life, in death, in history and in the current legal context. Q: Your process—working at night, using UV light, long exposures, and hand-toning with black tea—feels quiet and durational. Does this way of working reflect how memory or experience unfolds for you over time? Oona: Yes- it takes time throughout which you are considering this subject so intensely that you become subsumed by it. It is meditative and I feel it is healing. To suspend logical thought and experience the accidental nature of some of these processes- it’s part alchemy, part chance and seems to have a life of its own. I love that. Stayed tuned for PART III @oonahyland @casa_regis_art @vc_projects @el_nido_project #art #legacy #healing #ceramics #cyanotype

Oona Hyland, 2026, Little One | Unique Toned Cyanotype on ceramic jug | 8 inches Interview with Oona Hyland, artist in the group show, Photography into Sculpture an homage and an update, curated by L. Mikelle Standbrige, staged by Victoria Chapman at El Nido, Los Angeles PART 1 1. Your work Little One’s, from the series Active Forgetting, carries both a deeply personal origin and a broader historical context. How did the discovery of your family’s connection to the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home shape the direction of this series? Oona: The experience of discovering that my eldest brother was born in these circumstances and that the person I was closest to in my life had lived and died without sharing this with me. That she had had this traumatic experience of giving birth as an unmarried mother in Ireland in the 1940’s. That her family (maiden aunts in London) had sent her back to Ireland because of the shame she would bring to them. This deeply shocked me. It shook my foundations. I felt huge empathy for my mother and brother. It changed my view of my parents, of their relationship and of our family. The secrecy , the silence, felt corrosive. This series began as a way of coming to terms with this. 2. You describe Active Forgetting as an exploration of intergenerational trauma—something ongoing, inherited, and difficult to fully articulate. How do you approach making work around something that resists representation? Oona: With difficulty! I try to embody through my choice of materials and methods, thorough time and thought to express some aspects of this issue. It does resist representation. I try to articulate this difficulty. Continued… #oonahyland #art #ceramic #object #photography @oonahyland @casa_regis_art @el_nido_project @l.mikellestandbridge @vc_projects