“Moments in Between,” an exhibition of Courtney Rile’s photos at the Everson Museum, focuses on a period beginning during March, 2020, a time of grave societal and personal changes.
Federal and state authorities had issued stay-at-home orders because of the COVID pandemic. For a while, that effectively ended most work activities for Daylight Blue Media, the video-production company run by Rile and her partner, Michael Barletta. They founded that company in 2010 and continue to operate it today.
And yet, Rile’s images address far more than the social isolation that was taking place around the country. They investigate what she calls a “hurricane of emotions” in her household. She and Barletta were new parents, raising Wyrnn, their toddler daughter. In addition, they were dealing with the grief associated with the death of Barletta’s father.
As Rile considered turbulent times, she turned to photography, a medium with which she’s very familiar. Indeed, she’s done photography and video for many years. She created a series of portraits depicting both her daughter and young children being raised by friends. Ultimately, she interacted with 13 families.
Calling that a survey-style project is misleading. This is interpretative work exploring dualities: looking outward and inward, birth and death, life during the lockdown and life as it was lived prior to the COVID epidemic.
That’s being done in the context of a relatively small show consisting of 12 large photos and a quilt with 25 small images digitally printed on it. Given that situation, each photo must carry its own weight, and it’s important the various photographs work together to build an interesting narrative.
The exhibit includes a photo of a young child looking through a porthole opening. Her hands are raised, and she’s clearly curious. The porthole’s surface is partially covered with what looks like morning frost
Another image depicts a mother and young child moving toward a mailbox. It serves to remind viewers that certain routines continued even during the epidemic.
And “Moments in Between” really hits its stride with works in which Rile’s lens plays with reflections. In one photo, one of the best in the show, there’s a double image of Rile and her daughter looking at a plant in a basket within a glass receptable. Their shadows appear in the image’s bottom half, and there’s a partial view of trees outside.
A second scene portrays a scene near a park; there’s a father interacting with a young child and a mother holding a baby. The mom’s image is largely blurred.
Rile uses that technique several times, and it helps to communicate a sense of moments in time, of one moment fading into another. Beyond that, it helps to raise questions about our relationship with time. What do we remember from a particular month or year? Why is a particular moment significant?
That’s not to say the photos playing with reflections completely dominate the show. Rile’s project strives for variety. At home, she took photos at various times of the day, during various seasons. In interacting with the other families, she looked for varied settings.
And so, the exhibit has other images distinctive in their own right. One photo depicts a bird in a cage near a large window; through it, we see a fence partially covered by snow. And Rile created a set of three images portraying the same room but at different times: 8:01 a.m., 8:28 a.m. and 11:43 a.m. There’s a sense of changes in light.
There’s also the whole cloth quilt with its array of 25 images each the size of a postage stamp. Rile and Rachel Ivy Clarke, a textile artist collaborated on the quilt which portrays Wrynn in various positions trying to sleep. In her text, Rile notes that “it never occurred to me until I became a parent that we must learn to sleep. Sure, it’s an instinct, necessary to function, but habits are another matter. We are creatures of habit.”
Moreover, the quilt references a fundamental human activity- sleep. This is another example of the show stretching beyond the experiences of one household and those of Rile’s friends. “Moments in Between” evokes a time when thousands of people died from COVID, when others were sickened, when children couldn’t go to school, when millions of Americans worked at home. And yes, it was a time when children were born, nurtured and loved by their parents. The exhibit invites viewers to reconsider how they lived during that period and to contemplate how it impacts them today.
The show, part of the Everson’s CNY Artist Initiative, is on display through March 25, 2025 at the museum, 401 Harrison St. The Everson is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays. on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Admission is $14.00 for adults, $10.00 for seniors and students, $5 for children ages 6 to 12, $2.00 for patrons with an EBT card, free for Everson members, children five and younger, and people active in the U.S. Military.
For more information, call 315-474-6064.
Carl Mellor covered visual arts for the Syracuse New Times from 1994 through 2016. He continues to write about artists and exhibitions in the Syracuse area.
Photos (of photos) by Samuel Gruber/WNA