Stephanie Sylvester
Contributing Writer
Broward College’s Art Club hosted an art exhibition event on Feb. 7 presenting the photography of Anastasia Samoylova, a Miami-based creative photographer originally from Moscow, Russia.
She lived in Peoria, Illinois– the same town BC Art Department Head, John Selburg is from– for 7 years before abruptly moving to Miami Beach to continue her career at the South Florida Art Center where she has her own studio to create her art pieces for an entire year.
She majored in environmental design at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow and graduated with her MA in 2007. She then went on to pursue her MFA at Bradley University in 2011.
She previously worked as a fashion designer for Giorgio Armani, but she longed more for creating her own art. Samoylova’s art medium consists of taking a group of royalty photos and combining them creatively in different shapes, angles, shadows, color schemes, and overlapping methods to produce a cumulative unique photograph that is extremely appealing to the eyes.
Her introduction to photography wasn’t immediate. She began to explore photography during her time in graduate school when she was assigned to complete a project that consisted of photographing a building.
Her “Landscape Sublime” collection published in her 48-page debut book in 2016 was posted all around the Art Studio at Broward College consisting of groups of flowers, trees, lakes, mountains, deserts, forests and many more.
Her newest published work is “Flood Zone” that contains concepts rich in Miami beauty, weirdness and uniqueness. Broward College is one of the first places she has presented Flood Zone.
“In my childhood years, I was always sketching and cutting things up. We didn’t have access to things like Barbies, but I ended up cutting up paper dolls for myself.” From a young age, she knew she had the talent to excel in art. However, living in Russia didn’t make it easy especially in earlier times and even currently, art wasn’t widely accepted as a career to pursue.
Despite it all, she dedicated immense time to her passion for art as an introverted, intuitive child building her own works.
Freshman Jordane Champagne, who recently came out of the military, deeply pondered at her “Glaciers” piece during the exhibition.
“If you look from a distance it looks like an actual glacier. I’ve never seen a glacier before and that gives me an actual feel of a glacier,” he said.
Champagne’s connection to art is new, but he describes it as very therapeutic. He currently draws, but he would like to explore a variety of other mediums and seeing Samoylova’s art provided him with that drive and fresh new perspective that he needs to embellish on his passion for art.
Oliver Connors is another student who gained a new perspective from Samoylova’s art. Connors is a member of the Art Club and is majoring in media. He has plans to transfer to Florida Atlantic University after this semester.
“My favorite piece from her is the lightning piece. It was probably the sexiest piece,” said Connors, who is also a photographer, filmmaker and graphic designer.
Samoylova’s advice for students who want to pursue art is: “It’s going to be a sacrifice. You’re not going to make much money. There’s going to be a ton of rejection, but you just have to bulldoze your way because you know you can’t be doing anything else.”
For more information, visit her website at https://www.anasamoylova.com/.