Randy Albright
Visual Arts/Photography
Ask him when he became interested in photography and Randy Albright talks about a Fisher-Price camera he had
as a small boy, or the summer when he was 11 and saved up for a Minolta underwater camera.
"I was really into surfing, and I liked to take pictures in the ocean," he says. But he struggles to pinpoint a beginning. It is then that you realize Albright has probably always looked out upon the world with the eyes of an artist.
And when he talks about his work, saying, "I want it to be raw and honest and open," he speaks with a wisdom and a maturity way beyond his 18 years.
A freshman and an Artist Scholar, Albright had already accomplished much before his college career began. He's received countless awards and honors and, while still a student at the Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Towson, Maryland, was invited to
the White House as a participant in the elite U.S. Presidential Scholars Program and met President Bill Clinton.
He has Hollywood connections, too. He's sold two works to actress Sharon Stone, whom he met as a finalist in the National Foundation for the Arts Recognition and Talent Search in Miami. Stone serves on the artistic advisory board.
"She said my work was enchanting," he says, sounding especially pleased.
He sold Stone a photographic work, entitled In Stone, and a poem, "Devant la Devanture."
Albright is fascinated by both words and images, often combining the two.
"I love the juxtaposition of words. I love puns," he says. "I love the symbolism
of words."
He describes his work as "tactile, very involved with textures...There's a balance between the textures and the intellectual and emotional levels it deals with. If it's something harsh then you leave the photo raw and open. But if it's regarding something
hidden, you sand it off, solder over it, do whatever you can to hide what shouldn't be seen."
Albright, who is majoring in visual arts with an emphasis in photography, chose UMBC for its creative freedom. "Artistically, I don't want to know where I will be in 10 years," he says. "I just want to continue to like what I have done and to do it for me
and no one else. That's the bottom line. My favorite piece and the most important one to me, with few exceptions, is the one just finished. That's from where I'll move on."
This spring, Albright ventured in a new direction, leasing a 5,000-square-foot space in downtown Baltimore,
which he turned into a nonprofit gallery dedicated to showing works by promising young artists and musical
performers.
Through a wide-ranging network of contacts, he had works from artists all
over the country, nearly all of them under the age of 20. The gallery was
open for only one month-it was all the rent he could afford-but it drew
interest from the local arts community, and he's already talking about
future shows. But all that's at least a year away. This fall, he's
heading to Florence, attending art school in a University of
Maryland-affiliated program. Who knows what he'll be planning when he
returns.
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