Portfolio Throwdown

Photography Gathering and Portfolio ThrowDown  February 7th-8th

Portfolio reviews registration open now!

Deadline for Registration is January 22nd. 

Registration is on first-come-first-served bases! We will do our best to schedule you with your desired reviewers. Portfolio reviews for students will be $10.50 for five 20-minute reviews. The entry fees will go toward portfolio awards, selected by the reviewers.

Reviewer Bios and Registration Form are at the bottom of the page.

Registration is not completed without registration payment. Registrations are based on first come, first served basis- in order in which we receive the registration fees, paid through Square. You will receive the Square invoice link after you complete your reviewer selection. Please make the payment as soon as convenient after receiving your invoice. 

Schedule of Events:

All of events will be on East Carolina University Campus and near-by.

Map of eateries in downtown Greenville  

Friday, February 7th:         

Evening: Informal Gathering and Kick off (Location TBD)

First Friday ArtWalk in Downtown Greenville 

Saturday, February 8th:         

9AM-11:30AM: Informal Portfolio Sharing, Workshops, Exhibitions, and Tours of the School of Art and Design (Jenkins Fine Art Center):       

Workshops

11:30AM-1:00PM: Lunch

1:00PM to 6:25PM: Lectures and Presentations will run concurrently with portfolio reviews in adjoining room (Jenkins Fine Art Center).

Portfolio Reviews (Jenkins Fine Art Center)

Lectures and Presentations  (Speight Auditorium):

1:00PM   Addison Brown and Greg Banks

1:25PM   Courtney Johnson

1:50PM   Tony Jackson

2:15PM   Michael Gaines

2:40PM   Anderson Wrangle

3:05PM

3:30PM   Coffee Break

3:55PM   Heather Evans Smith

4:20PM   Bekah Alviani: Lifts & Loss: Processing Grief with Polaroid Lifts

4:45PM   Erika Caspedes: Reworking your photography in the era of technology

5:10PM   Jamie Robertson: The Unseen: Infrared Photography and the Swamp

5:35PM   Jennifer Mace

6:00PM

6:00PM:

Social Time

Accommodations 

We have two different choices for hotels:

Hilton Garden Inn (New, 6-minute walk from the Jenkins Fine art Center)

We have a block of 20 rooms at brand new Hilton Garden Inn, 423 Evans Street, Greenville, NC

Guest rooms will be held in the block until 1/7/2025. Booking includes:

• Complimentary Wi-Fi in all guest rooms and common areas.
• Convenient parking location with a $10.00 rate per day.
• Rooftop Bar and Restaurant.
• Fitness Center available 24 hours.

To book the new Hilton Garden Inn Downtown Greenville at $209 per night plus taxes, email Michelle Lodge, Director of Sales, at HGIGreenvilleNC.DOS@rainesco.com. Be sure to include the following in your email:

• Group Name: ECU SOAD Photography Educators Symposium
• Group Code: ECUSOAD25
• Your First and Last Name
• Your phone number
• Your preferred email address for confirmation
• Your arrival date
• Your departure date
• Your preferred room type (King or Queen Queen)”

Holiday Inn (2 miles to ECU)

We have a block of 10 rooms for $129 plus tax per night at Holiday Inn,  203 Greenville Blvd SW for ECU Photography- Please use BookingLink when registering.

AirBnBs in town– Good for larger shared groups: Link

Other hotels in Greenville: Link

And for those of you who are not opposed to Camping, River Park North is a nice location:

https://www.greenvillenc.gov/government/recreation-parks/river-park-north

Portfolio Reviewers

Bekah Alviani is a published, award-winning, and internationally exhibited lens-based artist whose work explores the relationship between images, objects, and memory – offering diverse perspectives of the subjects she documents. She has been published in Photographer’s Forum Best of Photography 2015, The Remake Project, and various other publications. Her work has recently been seen in solo exhibitions in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. 

Alviani holds an AST in Photography, a BFA in Graphic Design with minors in Art History and Marketing, and an MFA in Digital Arts. Alviani is also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer having served in Ghana, West Africa. She served as an art teacher in a Ghanaian school for the Deaf. Her service fostered a love of teaching, and she now works as an Assistant Professor of Art at Brevard College teaching digital art and photography while continuing her visual research and art-making practice. 

Greg Banks is a photo-based artist and instructor at Appalachian State University. He received his MFA in photography at East Carolina University in May 2017.  He received a B.A. in photography and a B.A. in fine art from Virginia Intermont College in 1998. Banks is a top 200 finalist in Photo Lucida’s Critical Mass in 2018. He was one of only seven artists chosen for the Light Factory’s Annuale 9 in 2017. Greg’s work was among the top 5 most popular, on the online magazine “Don’t Take Pictures” in 2017.  Greg combines everything from IPhone images to historic 19th century processes, gelatin silver printing, painting and digital printing. His current creative practice investigates family, folklore, memories, magic, Appalachia, as well as history and religion.

Shane Booth grew up in central Nebraska where he would spend hours looking at family photos with this grandmother, sparking his love for photography.  He graduated with a BA in art from Nebraska Wesleyan University and an MFA in photography from the Savanna College of Art and Design.  Currently he is a Full Professor of photography at Fayetteville State University. His diverse body of work has taken him all over the world where he has taught workshops and exhibited work in Sweden, Africa, Taiwan, and most recently Russia.   He received a grant to  work with HIV positive orphans in Ethiopia with Artists for Charity, and was awarded a another grant by the US Embassy in Moscow to work with the LGBTQ and HIV positive people in Russia.  He has many honors including being nominated for Sweden’s favorite TV star by QX magazine for his stint on the wildly popular reality tv show Allt for Sverige, tackling the subject of being HIV positive.  It was his time on this show that took him back to his roots and he began photographing Nebraska and its people.  He also photographed Laura Bush for The National Willa Cather Foundation.   His camera of choice is an antique studio camera from 1867 which he found in a junk shop in Alma NE that he has converted to shoot 8×10 film. 

Addison Brown is a photography-based artist currently living in Boone, North Carolina. He received his BA in photography at the University of Alabama Huntsville in 2012 and a MFA in photography at East Carolina University in 2017.

Erika Cespedes is a Costa Rican born commercial and fine art photographer. Her fine art focuses on narrative life events in natural settings and her commercial focuses on food photography and advertising. Current courses include Traditional, Experimental, Digital photography, Design Fundamentals and Post-Editing. Her fine artwork has been displayed in galleries and museums nationwide. She believes students from all cultural backgrounds and socio-economic status deserve art in their life as a form of expression and personal growth.

Dr. Tim Christensen grew up under the big skies of the West looking at the ground. A passionate interest in living things compelled him to get his Ph.D. in Genetics from Cornell and become a biology professor at East Carolina University. His well-practiced attention to the small and unnoticed bits of nature fills his walks through North Carolina. While completing his MFA at ECU he explored historical methods including: Cyanotype, Gum Bichromate, Van Dyke, and wet plate collodion. Tim has also pushed the boundaries of digital photography with his precision work in astrophotography and the creation of micro-panoramas.

Brian Culbertson is originally from Chesapeake, Virginia, currently residing in Greenville, North Carolina, where he is an instructor at East Carolina University. Brian has exhibited work internationally participating in exhibitions across the United States, Canada, China, and the United Arab Emirates. His work has been featured in publications such as The Hand Magazine, Don’t Take Pictures, Light Leaked, and Fraction Magazine. Brian creates images that investigate photography’s influence on cultural and social values.

Briana Earl is a collector of stories. As a photographer, Briana uses her medium to explore elaborate narratives through visual storytelling. Her current work focuses on themes of nostalgia, homesickness, and autobiographical memories. Briana is inspired by studies of sociology, psychology, and gerontology and how personal experiences influence our perception of memory. She is also influenced by her own experiences of aging and transitions.  Briana graduated from the University of South Dakota in 2018 with a BFA in Studio art with a specialization in Photography and a minor in Art History. Briana received her MFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Photography from East Carolina University in 2022.

Heather Evans Smith is a photo-based artist whose work reflects her southern roots, motherhood, womanhood and a whimsical imagination she relied on as an only child in a rural town. Her photographic imagery explores the ideas of memory, loss and family in conceptual settings. Smith’s work has been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock, England, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, NC and Leica Galerie Milano in Milan, Italy. She is a Critical Mass 2014, 2018 and 2021 Top 50 recipient, 2022 Silver List artist and the CENTER 2022 Me&Eve grant recipient. Her first monograph, Seen Not Heard, was published by Flash Powder Projects in 2016 followed by two self-published monographs, Alterations and Blue.

Rod Fincannon in Greenville NC, Roderick has been working in photography and photography education for over a 13 years. Rod’s work has been published and exhibited throughout the United States.

Michael Gaines is a photo-based artist and bookmaker residing in Boone, North Carolina. He received his BFA in Studio Art from Appalachian State in 2021 and his MFA in Photography from East Carolina in May 2024. Before moving to North Carolina, he spent 12 years in Philadelphia where his work was focused on exploring the intersections of urban life with industrial and civic decay. Over the past few years, his work has shifted towards an examination of the self and personal identity, exploring the concept of the personal myth and acts of code switching and masking, and their effects on the queer identity. He is currently an adjunct professor at Appalachian State University and Catawba Valley Community College.

Tony J. Jackson. As a visual artist, educator, and veteran, my work bridges art and science, exploring where creativity meets inquiry. My art has been showcased worldwide, notably in Japan, Germany, and the UK. In my practice, I delve into the unseen and overlooked, drawing inspiration from nature’s intricate patterns, the elegance of mathematical forms, and the dynamics of human interaction. For me, art is an expression and a tool for education and transformation. I aim to create works that invite viewers to look deeper, think critically, and engage more fully with the world around them

Courtney Johnson specializes in alternative process and experimental photography and is one of the leading scholars on the photographic cliché-verre technique. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions in New York, Miami, San Francisco, Richmond, Colombia, and Germany and is in numerous permanent collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; University of Central Florida; Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale; and FOTOMUSEO, Bogotá. Johnson earned her BFA from New York University and her MFA from the University of Miami. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington

David Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Coastal Carolina University. Johnson’s work has settled at the intersection of society, architecture, and the individual. Multiple bodies of work demonstrate ways in which space can affect personality and how individuals impact the environments they occupy, even momentarily. In 2019, Johnson’s first book, Wig Heavier Than a Boot, a collaborative project with poet Philip Matthews, was published by Kris Graves Projects; the following year, the project was featured at the Fotofest Biennial in Houston. In 2021, the University of Texas Press published Johnson’s second book, It Can Be This Way Always: Images from the Kerrville Folk Festival. His photographs have been exhibited internationally in venues including the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis, the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., Rathaus in Stuttgart, Germany, Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, and most recently at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts.

Jennifer Mace is a graduate of Colorado State University with a BFA in Photography, and James Madison University with a MFA in Photography.  For the past 16 years, she has been teaching photography at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington NC.

Artist Statement: Born in Guam, and living in Japan as a young child, Jennifer spent her formulative years learning to notice the world around her.

“Urban spaces have been a subject matter that I have gravitated towards for a while. I’m interested in documenting everyday order so I can make sense of the places I frequent.“

Julie Snyder Mixon is an Associate Professor of Photography at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina. Julie teaches a variety of photography courses at FMU that include topics such as darkroom, experimental, digital, photographic lighting and advanced photography. She received her MFA in Photography from East Carolina University and a BFA in Photography from Barton College. She specializes in alternative photographic processes and explores the combination of analog and digital photographic processes. Julie has exhibited her work regionally, nationally and internationally.

Rebecca Nolan, Professor, Graduate Program Coordinator, Savannah College of Art and Design. Rebecca Nolan received a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and an MFA from the University of Oregon, Eugene. She is excited to see all types of work.

Jamie Robertson is a visual artist and educator who works in photography and video. Her creative practice investigates the landscape of the American South as a living archive of Black life, engaging the land physically and spiritually as a primary witness to Black resistance, solace, and power.

Anderson Wrangle is an Associate Professor at Clemson, where he has taught Photography since 2007.  He received his B.A. in English, and Studio Art from the University of the South, and earned his M.F.A from the University of Houston in 2001, and he was a Visiting Assistant Professor there from 2003 to 2007.  Anderson Wrangle was a 2019 Hambidge Center Resident.  He was named a 2021-2023 Creativity Professor in the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities, and has many research grants funding work in the Savannah River Basin, the Outer Banks, The ACE Basin, and other projects. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro/Coleção Joaquim Paiva, the Galerie hlavního města Prahy, Prague, and private collections

Angela Franks Wells is a photography-based artist specializing in 19th century photographic processes. As an educator, she is committed to facilitating creative thinking and skilled making with her students. Her recent creative endeavors are about playful investigation and finding levity. Angela is an Associate Professor of Photography at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. where she enjoys the lush greenery of the south, proper weather storms, and the benefits of natural humidity in the studio.