Silver Eye

Several artists in Fellowship 25 explore how our perception and understanding are shaped by emotional and sensory experiences. For example, Clare Sheedy integrates photographs and poems in both standard text and braille, offering a multi-layered experience that reflects her processes of inquiry and invites us to think and feel through different states of knowing and unknowing. Sobia Ahmad’s process-driven work challenges conventional ways of seeing. Many of her photographs were taken on reversal film stock and printed as negatives, inverting the way we typically perceive images. Ahmad’s meditative exploration of ecological concerns invites viewers to connect emotionally with her work, while emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things and diverse ways of knowing.

Join the artists at 6pm today via the Zoom link below:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86245363839?pwd=vYTmszdWZ5MfNfZHAIC6n6q0muCrne.1

Image credit: Sobia Ahmad,To Become Dust that Sings it’s Melody to the Night, 2024

Participating Artists

1. Sobia Ahmad’s interdisciplinary practice explores the transcendental power of everyday experiences, objects, and rituals through photography, time-based media, and social engagement.

   Ahmad earned an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2024) and a BA in Studio Art and a BS in Community Health from the University of Maryland, College Park (2016, 2015). Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions and festivals including the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Craft Contemporary, and Beijing International Short Film Festival.

   Ahmad’s work has been supported by Washington Project for the Arts’ Wherewithal Project and Research Grants (2026, 2025) and The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Exposure Artist Grant (2024–2025). She is a recipient of Silver Eye Center for Photography’s 2025 Keystone Award, has attended SOMA Summer in Mexico City (2024) and Halcyon Arts Lab (2019–2020), and is a current Hamiltonian Artists Fellow in Washington, DC (2024–2026).

2. Clare Sheedy lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches art to children and works at a Downtown box office. In her work, Sheedy explores the tactile edges of perception and presence, incorporating photographs and braille to complicate boundaries between knowing and unknowing. Her work invites a shared attentiveness between viewer and artist, forming an intimacy through language, touch, and feeling. Sheedy’s processes are about surrendering to the act of imaginative extension, where senses and self both solidify and liquefy in the presence of the work.