“What I remember is that Sean was so incredibly knowledgeable about the subject in deep and authentic ways,” says Mann now. “I gravitated toward him because he was so calm and I found his feelings about photography beautiful.”
Wilkinson remembers his former student as a marvel.
“Curtis was so caught up in something new to him, he was a real force of energy,” he said. “He was such a bright student, eager and ready to learn and so enthused about what he was doing in a low-key way. He was great with the other students who respected and admired him. If anything needed attention, like a camera that was broken, Curtis would quietly fix it.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
It was Wilkinson and other UD professors who were instrumental in dramatically altering Mann’s career path. That journey has brought him full circle to the current exhibit at The Contemporary Dayton where Mann’s photography is being showcased along with the work of his esteemed professor.
“I am absolutely honored to be sharing gallery space with Sean,” said Mann, who hadn’t seen his mentor in 20 years and said it’s exciting to know his work is being shown alongside the work of a man who first inspired him.
Mann’s exhibit is entitled “Precious Blood.” Wilkinson’s is “Flora.” The idea for the joint exhibit came from curator Jeffrey Cortland Jones, who taught Mann in a painting class and was a colleague of Wilkinson’s.
Both exhibits are part of the FotoFocus Biennial and will be on display through Dec. 21. Mann, who now lives near Providence, Rhode Island, will return to his hometown on Friday, Nov. 22 to join his mentor for a free artist talk.
Something ‘clicked’
“I had always been interested in art and I was creative and loved to draw as a kid,” said Mann, who grew up in Trotwood and attended Precious Blood elementary school and Chaminade-Julienne Catholic High School. “But I never identified as an artist or thought of being one. I didn’t think that was a ‘thing.’”
Because he was so strong in science and math, his dad recommended he study engineering in college.
“It made sense, people told me that’s what I would be good at,” said Mann.
But UD opened his eyes to other options.
“I saw kids who were passionate about engineering and I wasn’t,” he said. “I had a friend who had a camera and I thought that looked interesting. So I took a basic photography class where I learned how to use a camera. Photography appealed to me because it was a combination of math, technical stuff and freedom. It clicked pretty fast.”
At the request of his father, Mann completed his engineering degree and had an engineering job lined up after graduation.
“All the right things said I should take that job, but the teachers at UD said I should try photography if I loved it.” And so he decided to return to Dayton and audit every photography class that UD offered. He then headed for graduate school in Chicago and by 2014 was working full-time as an artist, combining photography and sculpture.
Since that time Mann’s work has been exhibited widely: at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In addition to gallery exhibitions, Mann also teaches photography to high school students in Dedham, Massachusetts.
“I think what captured me is that I found the medium very complex,” Mann said. “I loved images and the power they held and I liked messing with that. I don’t always make pictures. A teacher at UD encouraged me to tear a photo in half and I realized that changed everything. I’ve been doing that ever since.”
Mann’s current exhibition
All of Mann’s work currently on display at The Co was made specifically for this exhibit. It is his first solo exhibit in his hometown.
“I knew I wanted to make something connected with Dayton and coming home,” he said. “I had never made work about my own family.”
What resulted is an exhibit that pays tribute to his relationship with his mother, Lois Mann, who passed away in May of 2023.
“I loved my mother dearly and she loved me,” he said.
But it wasn’t always an easy relationship. A significant element of Mann’s exhibit deals with the differences between mother and son when it came to religion.
“She was a devout Catholic and very religious and I am an atheist,” Mann said. “When I thought about her funeral and was reading some of her old notes, it brought all that up. We wouldn’t fight over it but it was a hard difference to navigate. Even as a child I had questions when I was at Precious Blood school. My relationship to religion was born in Dayton.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Mann said he has always relished working with challenging materials.
“I worked with bleach for a series; I had to form a relationship with it. And I had to learn how to work with glass or it would cut me. Glass breaks the way it wants to break so I have to respect it and collaborate with it.”
In the current exhibit, Mann blends shards of glass with slices of photos.
“It’s about the fragility of something,” he explained. “When I heard that Sean would be showing a series of flora, I was excited because I had been thinking about funeral bouquets — elements that look like thorns and sticks. I wanted to bring pieces that connected with Sean’s work.”
Mann, who works in a detached garage that he’s made into a studio, said Dayton represents the place and the relationships that made him. His father, Thomas Mann, still lives here.
“I think Dayton is interesting — beautiful and diverse,” he said. “And Sean is so important to who I am today.”
Calm and tranquility
Wilkinson, whose work is available in the gift shop at The Co., said he’d be hard-pressed to think of two exhibits that are so radically different.
“There’s a great deal of angst in Curtis’ exhibition, there’s anger and violence and a sense of real inner conflict,” he said. “And with all of those sharp glass edges it’s a cutting exhibit.”
His own photos of plants provide a dramatic contrast. He’s hoping visitors will experience a sense of tranquility when viewing them, a sense of contemplation and a sense of encountering something beautiful, whether or not they recognize a particular plant.
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
For that reason, Wilkinson requested that no wall labels accompany his photographs.
“Every single one of them was made in one of the Five Rivers MetroParks but that is completely irrelevant and I think identifying the park or the plant would be distracting,” he explained. “I just want people to have time to look at the pictures themselves as images and not be distracted.”
“I want them to find the exhibit a valuable and meaningful experience and encounter something beautiful that makes them ponder and find some sense of peace and grace.”
HOW TO GO
What: Curtis Mann: “Precious Blood” and Sean Wilkinson: “Flora”
Where: The Contemporary Dayton, 25 W. Fourth St., Dayton
Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, through Dec. 21
Admission: Free
Related programming: A free artist talk by Curtis Mann and Sean Wilkinson in conversation with artist/writer Carmen Winant will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22. A reception will follow.
For more information: (937) 224-3822 or codayton.org
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