Featured Artist
Travis Helmkamp is a pictorial artist based in Norfolk, Virginia. Travis received his B.F.A. in studio art from Central Washington University in 2008.
In recent projects, the artist has manipulated historic photographs and vintage magazines as a means to explore the concept of declarative memory. His current work investigates the process by which subjective histories and memories can be embedded into material forms.
As Featured Artist, Travis Helmkamp has created the "Engram Series." An engram is a theory which seeks to explain how memory traces are encoded in the brain.
Fragrances from Contraposto Home Decor's "Genre Series of Home Fragrances" were used as an engram to evoke a memory. The memory was then described to the artist who in turn interpreted the description in a painting.
The participant whose memories inspired the three featured paintings is a 75 year-old blind man who, at age 5, lost his sight. The memories evoked by the fragrances were described to the artist in formal terms, relying primarily on color and texture to narrate the memory.
In recent projects, the artist has manipulated historic photographs and vintage magazines as a means to explore the concept of declarative memory. His current work investigates the process by which subjective histories and memories can be embedded into material forms.
As Featured Artist, Travis Helmkamp has created the "Engram Series." An engram is a theory which seeks to explain how memory traces are encoded in the brain.
Fragrances from Contraposto Home Decor's "Genre Series of Home Fragrances" were used as an engram to evoke a memory. The memory was then described to the artist who in turn interpreted the description in a painting.
The participant whose memories inspired the three featured paintings is a 75 year-old blind man who, at age 5, lost his sight. The memories evoked by the fragrances were described to the artist in formal terms, relying primarily on color and texture to narrate the memory.
