Perspective Gallery at Virginia Tech hosts a Flex Gallery in the hallway adjacent to the gallery on the 2nd floor of Squires. We reserve this space for emerging artists who are members of the campus community and not necessarily with a background in the arts.
Emilie Apel
Emilie Apel is a rising senior at Virginia Tech, majoring in Public Relations and minoring in Visual Arts Society. She is heavily involved in the art and music scene on Virginia Tech’s campus and wants to find a job that will combine these passions. Outside of class she spends a lot of time hiking, reading, and creating. She hopes to continue working on her artistic practice after graduation to one day pursue her MFA.
My
exhibit Ethereal Light is a series of photographs I took using long exposure on
a digital camera. They are a direct result of me experimenting with moving the
camera in different ways to manipulate the light. The forms the light took in
the photos only exist in the photos themselves, they never existed in the
physical world. This concept brought me to the idea that reality is subjective.
Your reality is different from my reality, we perceive the world in different
ways because we’re having completely different experiences. My hope with these
photographs is that they will be perceived differently from person to person,
reinforcing this concept of subjective reality. Acknowledging the fluidity that
‘reality’ is makes a lot of things in life easier to comprehend and accept.
Most of my artistic practice explores similar existential themes and concepts.
Untitled,
Digital Photograph, 2021 (Ethereal Light @ Perspective Flex Gallery)
I’m
still a young artist, who is self-taught, and I don’t have any specific
direction that I want to take my art in…yet. This leaves me a lot of room for
experimentation, which I’ve been enjoying more and more recently. I’ve been
enjoying working in a variety of different mediums, and I’m not planning on
restricting myself to focus on just one anytime soon. The next somewhat
structured project I’ve been working on is a project where I photograph cows
across rural Appalachia. I want these photographs to show that there is a right
way to raise animals, and it is possible to raise cows on farms in humane ways;
in ways that are sustainable and beneficial to the ecosystem. My goal is to
photograph the beauty that comes from seeing cows are living how they’re
supposed to live.
Twenty-Four,
Digital Photograph, 2020
I’ve
had a camera in my hands ever since I was 12 years old, which led me to
learning Photoshop at a young age. I didn’t know it at the time, but learning
to use my camera and editing photographs on Photoshop was the beginning of my
artistic practice. My extensive knowledge of Photoshop is what brought me to
creating digital art. I enjoy the process that comes from drawing the sketch
out on paper, then digitizing it and adding color and other details on
Photoshop. Umbrella Hand is one of my favorite digital media pieces
because it can be viewed from any orientation. You can flip it 90, 180 or 270
degrees and the illustration still makes sense, only your perception of the
image changes.
Umbrella
Hand, Digital Media, 2020
A
lot of my work has messages that are focused on sustainability and climate change. I want
people to start treating their local environments and the Earth as a whole with
the respect it deserves. As the climate crisis continues to escalate, our time
to take action is diminishing. Awareness is the first step to get society on
board with changing our lifestyles to implement sustainable practices. I
created this digital art piece for a class last semester, the idea behind the
piece is to show how we as humans are one species, killing hundreds of other
species. The sea is home to species we haven’t even discovered yet, and we’re
evoking irreversible damage to it.
100
Species, Digital Media, 2021
It’s
hard to say where my art will take me, or what mediums I will gravitate
towards. All I know is that I am motivated by my passion for it, and the
complex ideologies that can be explored through visual representation. I’ve
gone down a long road of self-discovery to reach the point where I’m at right
now, but I know this is just the tip of the iceberg. I photograph a lot of
natural landscapes and nature in the world. I like to say that I don’t have to
do any of the work when it comes to my pictures, the mountains, the light, and
the landscape do all the work for me. My gratitude is never-ending for the
natural beauty I’ve gotten to witness so far in my lifetime.
Sunrise
with a Red Tent, Digital Photograph, 2020
If
you’re interested in viewing some of my other work, I try to maintain a digital
portfolio here: emilieapel.myportfolio.com. And I just decided to make an
Instagram account for my art (@e.yes.ee), I’ve been posting a lot of sketches
and less developed pieces I’ve done. My Instagram is an experiment, I’m not
huge on social media, but I understand the opportunities it can bring for
artists, so I’m seeing how it goes. Thank you for taking the time to read about
my work and if you have questions or just want to connect, please follow my
Instagram, or shoot me a message on my contact page on my website. Many thanks
and appreciation goes to Perspective Gallery for showing my work. It is a truly
surreal experience to see my art in a gallery setting.
