Buff and “Hoping Tomorrow Will Already Be Different From Today” by Ivette Spradlin and Lenore Thomas

Buff started as a message on Instagram from Lenore to Ivette: “I love these photographs, I want to print on them!” While it took us a few years to actually start the project, this quick message turned into our second collaboration. The work is about conversations: ones that Ivette has with the environment, buildings, and painted out graffiti buffs as she walks throughout the city; conversations Lenore has with Ivette’s photographs, color, patterns, light, scale, collage; and conversations we have with one another while making the work. The resulting unique mixed media pieces are the material result of these exchanges. We invite viewers to see the buffs as something like a found color field painting that has been removed from its original context and then physically and conceptually extended through material interventions.

Buff explores and challenges our perceived categories of masculine vs. feminine. The spaces are often abandoned or industrial, associated with masculine work, and the Buff pieces have decorative and what are historically considered more feminine media - sewing, and patterning. Buff allows these associations to intersect, creating subtle tensions that draw attention to these gendering practices. Buff also highlights the way that the space bears the traces of those who inhabit and pass through it; by commenting on it, we reimagine and insert ourselves into that space.

The process of creating the video “Hoping Tomorrow Will Already Be Different From Today” was similar to our Buff prints. The base image of timelapse clouds from Ivette’s bedroom window, captured over 2-3 years, were then manipulated by Lenore who responded to the colors found in the sky and created blocks that move through the silhouetted row of homes on the bottom half of the screen. Again there are ideas of environmental effects on its inhabitants, public vs. private, and reimagining and inserting ourselves into a space. The pace of the video is determined by the music Mureed by Michael Harrison. Made only weeks before the world went on lockdown, the video felt particularly poignant during the pandemic, a representation of the movement and changes that continue to occur despite physical stagnation.

Ivette Spradlin recently relocated from Pittsburgh, PA to Atlanta, GA.

Lenore Thomas lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.

See more of their collaborations and individual work:

ivettespradlin.com
lenorethomas.com

@bufffoto
@evieknevie
@crunchshark

Buff