Sheilah (Wilson) ReStack
Professor ReStack’s work is a feminist, queer proposal for new systems of knowledge and narrative. She states, “I use traditional film and photographic paper combined with concrete wedges, gold leaf, rubber bands, felted photographs, thread, steel, fur, acetate, rocks, goldenrod, copper, plexiglass — and more — to transform photography into material assemblages. I want the energy of contact between the unexpected registers to be delicate and precarious, flawless and flawed.”
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries and museums such as Camden Center for the Arts (London), The Blue Building Gallery (Halifax, Nova Scotia), Enjoy Gallery (Wellington, New Zealand), New Mexico Museum (Santa Fe, NM), GAA Gallery (Tribeca, NY), Iceberg Projects (Chicago, IL), Interface Gallery (Oakland, CA), NW9 (Cologne, Germany) and other venues. Awards include Headlands Center for the Arts residency (2016), Canada Council Research and Development Grant (2016), Denison University Research Funding (2010, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022), Banff Center residency (2011), Canada Council Project Grant (2012, 2015), Howard Foundation Photography Grant (2016), Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence (2014, 2019, 2021, 2024), Union Docs Fellowship (2019), Macdowell (2019), and Visual Studies Workshop (2021).
ReStack also collaborates with her partner, Dani (Leventhal) ReStack, on video and projection installation work. Their collaborative video, Strangely Ordinary This Devotion (SOTD), was premiered at the Whitney Biennial in 2017. The ReStacks completed a trilogy of films under the title Feral Domestic and are currently working on a speculative historical work, Stovepipe to the Sun.
Learning & Teaching
“In teaching, I rely on a bilateral approach of skills and concepts. In Introductory classes, I work specifically on foundational tools for mastering the camera and basic editing. To begin, I focus on slowing down the act of looking. We live in an image-saturated world; the ubiquity of the image and its accessibility forces us to see quickly and abundantly. We are constantly presented with new images to process. The act of really looking at one’s environment and considering how you can change it, through framing, is a deceptively simple, yet powerful, act. Students often have a level of perceived comfort or knowledge with photography because of its ubiquity and the democracy of the medium. Because what I am asking them to do is quite different from what they may associate immediately with photography; fashion, advertising, nature, journalism, etc. I am actually asking them to question and privilege the act of looking and observing in the world.”
- Introduction to Photography
- Analog and Alchemy: Introduction to Darkroom Practices
- Writing with Light: Introduction to Studio Lighting
- Introduction to Video Art
- Photograph as Performative Gesture
- Queering the Archive (Denison Seminar)
- Photography and Fashion from 1950-80
Research
Other
- 2021 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for Photographic Practice
- 2020 Canada Council for the Arts Travel Grant Eastern Edge (Newfoundland) Residency
- Union Docs UNDO Fellowship for radical practices of documentary filmmaking with Dani ReStack (2019)
- Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for Collaborative Practice (2019)
- Canada Council for the Arts: Research and Development for Future from Inside (2018)
- Onion City Best of Festival Award by Amina Ross, Carl Bogner and Hannah Piper-Burns (2018)
- Howard Foundation Photography Fellowship, Brown University (2017)
- Canada Council for the Arts: Project Grant (2016)
- Honorable Mention Excellence in Photographic Teaching, Center for Photography Santa Fe (2016)
- Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence in Photography Grant (2016)
The Billboard Project in Newark, Ohio was run with the assistance of students at Denison University. The Billboard Project was envisioned as a catalyst and forum for contemporary art in the economically depressed, post industrial town of Newark, Ohio. It is a project that works collaboratively between Denison University and Newark Schools. The goal is always to use art as agent of social change and empowerment. It is important to recognize that where we live can be a site for change, ideas and, ideally, empowerment and conversation for students and community.
