John Freyer explains how he came to make art that creates space for people to slow down and have honest conversations with each other.

This episode also features artist, curator and educator Sarah Irvin, curator of student exhibitions and programs at the Anderson, VCUarts' premier on-campus exhibition space.

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About John Freyer
John Freyer is an associate professor of cross-disciplinary media at VCUarts. Freyer is a Peer Recovery Support Specialist and a founding member of the Inclusive Recovery City initiative in Richmond, Va. His projects include the Free Narcan Bike, All My Life for Sale, Free Ice Water, Free Hot Coffee, & Free Hot Supper. Freyer is a Fulbright Scholar, a MacDowell Fellow and an artist-in-residence at Light Work & the Fannon Center, Doha. Freyer has brought his social practice projects to the TEDx stage, Mixed Greens Gallery in New York, the Liverpool Biennial Fringe and was a 2018 Tate Exchange Associate at Tate Modern. Freyer founded the traveling symposium Recovery in Practice at Columbia University in the Fall of 2023. Recovery In Practice has since been hosted at University of Derby, Teesside University in the UK in 2024, Virginia Commonwealth University and at the Portland Alano Club in 2025.

About Sarah Irvin
Sarah Irvin is an artist, curator and educator. She earned a Master of Fine of Arts from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia. Irvin has been featured in more than twenty solo shows, as well as more than eighty group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She is the founder of the Artist Parent Index, a searchable database of artists making work about their experience with reproduction and caring for their children. She is the Curator of Student Exhibitions and Programs at the Anderson and teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses for VCUarts. Irvin is represented by Bond Millen Gallery, Richmond; Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York; and Massey Klein Gallery, New York.

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VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Music by Felipe Letão.

For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted.

Pam Turner discusses the animus in animation, the power of place, and her extraordinary journey from tenant farm to university.

This episode also features Hope Ginsburg, professor of Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts.

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About Pam Turner
Pamela Taylor Turner is an artist, writer and educator working at the intersection of animation and emerging media. Her practice—both in the studio and on the page—explores animation as an inventive, interdisciplinary art form, a medium for expressing inner states and for deepening our sense of place and connection to the natural world and to our knowledge of place. Her work gravitates towards abstraction and open narrative and is underpinned by a childhood spent in the woods of rural Virginia and an unwitting nudge from her parents who gave her a Kodak Pocket Instamatic camera when she was eleven (which she still has).

Her early animations, Falling Back to Earth: Tomatillo (2000) and Between Frames (2005), emerged from an intimate dialogue with gardens— witnessing and attending to soil, light, and the subtle choreography of plants. These works embody the principles of ecopsychology, inviting viewers to experience transformation through presence and observation.

Currently, Turner is completing Unsettling Chapel Island, a long-term study and animation project rooted in years of research along the James River, while continuing her series Seeking/Sensing.

Her animations have been exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries and festivals, including Ajijic Festival Internacional de Cine (Mexico), Nashville Independent Film Festival, Worldfest Houston, and Mill Valley Film Festival. Her work has earned numerous honors, among them a Director’s Citation at the Black Maria Film Festival and a Gold Award at Worldfest Houston.

As an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts, Turner teaches independent and expanded animation and developed Animating Place, a course grounded in ecopsychology and the transformative process of animation. She is currently a faculty fellow with the Richmond Cemetery Collaboratory through VCU Division of Community Engagement.

Turner holds advanced certifications in Ecopsychology, Radical Ecopsychology, and a certificate in Enchantment from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

About Hope Ginsburg
Hope Ginsburg is a maker of collaborative projects where art, ecology and spirituality meet. She is currently exploring the relationship between meditation and the natural world: that attunement in contemplative practice is deepened in nature, just as meditation reveals a feeling of awe and connection to our environment. Her recent work asks how this reciprocal experience moves us to action as part of a living world that urgently needs our attention.

Ginsburg holds a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia (Tsenacomoco land), with her partner and frequent collaborator, Joshua Quarles, and their three cats. Ginsburg is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts.

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VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Music by Felipe Letão.

For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted.

Visual effects artist Matt Wallin discusses working at Industrial Light and Magic and Weta Digital, and shares lessons about demystifying the meaning of life through the church of the movies.

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About Matt Wallin
Matt Wallin grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs in the 70s and 80s skateboarding and going to the movies. In 1992 he earned his degree in Cinema from San Francisco State University.

That same year, Wallin began his career at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic where he worked for nearly a decade in the company’s computer graphics division. For over 25 years he has worked around the world at the top visual effects houses; Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital in New Zealand, Tippett Studio in Berkeley, Sony Pictures Imageworks in Los Angeles, Warner Bros. ESC Entertainment in California, Brainstorm Digital in New York, and the Moving Picture Company in Vancouver. His many film credits include; The Mummy, Twister, Star Wars: The Special Editions, Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions, Hellboy, Constantine, King Kong, Watchmen and Jurassic Park: The Lost World.

Outside of Hollywood, Wallin served as the Visual Effects Supervisor for American artist Matthew Barney's five-part Cremaster Cycle and the follow up experimental film, Drawing Restraint 9, starring Icelandic pop star Bjork.

Wallin is the creator and host of the 8111 (Eighty-one Eleven) podcast. Each episode is a conversation with a guest who worked at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic during its 40+ year history. Guests discuss their journeys and career paths, and how working at ILM changed them. Wallin is also the co-host of FX Guide’s VFX Show podcast listened to by visual effects professionals, fans, and aspiring artists from all over the world.

Today he is the senior full-time faculty in the department of Communication Arts and a tenured full Professor in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. He teaches numerous courses specializing in 3D computer graphics, visual effects and the creative application of emerging digital technologies.

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VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Music by Felipe Letão.

For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted.