Digital Media Art Collection.

About Making Friends

Two unicorns wash upon a deserted island, and quickly begin to fall into their respective roles of gender performance. An ominous collection of purple characters begins to dissolve into the scene, and as the unicorns become aware of their existence, they start to interact and teach these somewhat androgynous beings different gestures and actions. The whole thing becomes a chaotic, awkward mess. This collaborative piece was created by Josh Roach and Emily Lehman. The purple characters are portrayed by Molly Markow, Kirsten Heteji, Felicia Cannon, Jake Murray, and Brian Flight.

Artist: Josh Roach and Emily Lehman
Title: Making Friends
Date: 2017
Medium: Video, color, sound, 12 min 30 sec.
Credit: Gift of the artists
Accession Number: 004.2019
Copyright: © Josh Roach and Emily Lehman

Josh Roach is a multidisciplinary artist/maker currently based out of Bloomington-Normal, Illinois. His practice is focused around the characters that he becomes through the wearing of hand-made costumes, and the subsequent actions that he performs with objects and other creatures in both constructed and real-world spaces. Recently, this has mostly been through either live performance or video work. Josh received his MFA in Sculpture & Expanded Media at Illinois State University in 2019.

Emily Lehman's art practice is an ongoing investigation of dingy, worn, and forgotten things. It is about noticing and participating with the material world in a way that surpasses what happens in our conditioned experiences of the everyday. Emily received her MFA from Illinois State University and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland.