RCWMS is so pleased to officially welcome MJ Sharp as our 2024 artist-in-residence! Co-sponsored by RCWMS and The Fruit, MJ will be working with previously unseen material from past decades as well as continuing to explore her 2021–2022 Fulbright work from the UK, “Our Disappearing Darkness,” which addresses issues of contemporary light pollution through the prehistoric monoliths of Cornwall at night. The residency’s public programming will include both pop-up exhibits and lectures over the course of 2024.
A photographic artist and educator based in Durham, North Carolina, MJ was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Exeter, UK, for the 2021–2022 academic year pursuing the art/science collaboration Our Disappearing Darkness and Recreating True Night with nocturnal ecologist Dr. Kevin Gaston. She shared some of her experiences in a fascinating lecture for the RCWMS community in October, 2022.
MJ’s artwork is included in the collections of The Akron Art Museum, The Asheville Museum of Art, The Cassilhaus Collection, The Henry-Copeland Art Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, The North Carolina Museum of Art, and The Slow Exposures Permanent Collection, Pike County, Georgia. Poet and art critic Chris Vitiello’s review of the Light Cache show is a comprehensive introduction to her work. A behind-the-scenes look at the pivotal Scotland project show sponsored by Cassilhaus is here.
She was a Lecturing Fellow at The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University from 2012—2022. She also served on the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Nasher Museum of Art and was a founding member of the Duke Faculty Union. For most of the 1990s, MJ worked closely with writers and reporters on both short- and long-form journalism stories as the staff photographer and photography editor at The Independent in Durham. During much of that time she also freelanced regionally for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, PBS’s Frontline, The Columbia Journalism Review, and The Ford Foundation, among others.
The mission of the RCWMS artist-in-residence program is to provide a platform that helps elevate the work of talented local artists. Previous artists-in-residence for RCWMS include Bryant Holsenbeck, Sue Sneddon, and Kimberley Pierce Cartwright.
Welcome MJ! We are so glad you’re here.
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