Spotlight Arts: Rock, Paper, Scissors
Artist Statement
Sasha Louis Bush’s ongoing series Rock, Paper, Scissors, uses elementary school classrooms in New York City as a shared creative space, serving both children and adults. Bush’s formal photographs observe states of creativity and learning, ranging from disorientation to geometric order, aiming to ground viewers in a child’s perspective. An attention to the accumulated materials—scattered throughout in disarray or neatly organized—directs viewers’ attention to the many possibilities offered by students’ ongoing activities. Stacked and re-stacked in ever shifting transformations, Bush highlights students’ use of wooden blocks—speaking to learning more broadly and the dual roles of teacher and student that participants and artist alike occupy—as a means of reimagining the possible in a continuous and incomplete process of development.
Sasha Louis Bush (b.1987) is a New York City-based visual artist and educator who works with photographs and video. Bush received his MFA from ICP-Bard (2017) and BA from Hampshire College (2009). His practice centers on temporal and site-specific activities that encourage participants in their ability to play dual roles as students and teachers as a means to examine the process of learning. Bush has taught at the school of the International Center of Photography, Vassar College, SUNY New Paltz, and Poughkeepsie Day School. His work has been shown at The Camera Club of New York, ICP, and Barrett Art Center, and his work is held in the collections of the ICP Library in New York City and the Clara M. Eagle Gallery in Murray, KY.
