Patrick Earl Hammie: I AM… THE NIGHT travels across the United States and examines the tension between joy and fear. Paintings and prints disrupt the nostalgia of images from the television program “Soul Train” (1971-2006), by including widely distributed 19th- and early 20th- century lynching photographs. The installation confronts our fears of the “Other” and proposes that our connection to collective experience allows fresh space for empathy and action.

Hammie studied drawing at Coker University (2004) and received an M.F.A. in painting from University of Connecticut (2008). He is currently an associate professor and chair of studio arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and his works are included in public and private collections. He was an artist-in-residence at the John Michael Kohler Art Center and the first recipient of the Alice Cole ’42 Fellowship from Wellesley College.