Erin Neve

Erin Neve, a native Texan, is a photographic artist currently working in San Antonio. Erin’s work centers on ideas of “the body” – the body as a built object in constant flux and mid-transformation, as a space of interior and exterior boundaries, as fragile, as sacred, as a source of abject experience, and as a site of the sublime. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently in Turku, Finland and Austin, TX. Erin received her MFA in photography from the University of Minnesota in 2012, and an MA in Philosophy in 2006 where she focused her research on aesthetics and photographic theory.

Artist Statement

The photos in these series explore themes of fragility, transformation, and bodily ritual in search of transcendence. This work began in 2012 when I accepted a job at a religious school, and I found myself observing others acting out sincere devotion grounded in specific bodily rituals. I watched as they bowed, chanted, sung, ate wafers, and prayed. They believed that bodies that ritually perform these sacred acts express the divine. Guided by a complex history of liturgical tradition, like a dance, I watched as these devout practitioners performed for God to make visible that which is invisible.

From Bread Towers

In Bread Towers, I build towers of bread as stand-ins for the physical body. The structures are made of individual bread pieces balanced entirely on each other. In my studio, the act of balancing quickly became a meditative ritual that requires focus, patience, and a delicate hand. Most towers fall within seconds; some last minutes so that I am able to photograph the structure before it collapses. I learn each piece of bread, how it is shaped, how it shifts, moves, where the weight falls, its density, its limitations; each piece becomes a part of the whole bread-body. The resulting photographs are minimalist still lives of upward grounded fragile pillars of bodily material.

From Submerge

In Submerge, I use water as transformative material by submerging prints into holy water to transform them into sacred and fragile photographic objects. The photos show scenes of clouded underwater landscapes, fogged and disorienting, with light beams and orbs and fragments of floating natural debris. The photos are transfer printed onto handmade kozo paper, and then submerged in holy water and dried. I must dip the prints slowly, carefully, or they will rip and disintegrate in the water. The results are delicately rippled, fragile, and translucent, giving physical form to their invisible transformation.

Karen Garrett de Luna

Karen Garrett de Luna holds BAs in Dance (1995) and Mathematics (2000) from the University of Washington and an MAA in Visual Arts (2011) from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. A multi-disciplinary artist and photographer, Karen was the 2011 recipient of the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal and the Winsor Gallery Award winner for her thesis work, The Illuminated Body, a series of embossed self-portraits on japanese paper. A participant in the last ever Banff New Media Centre’s ‘Almost Perfect’ residency, de Luna’s interactive swarm of LED fireflies, Ning Ning, was a juried project in Toronto’s 2010 Nuit Blanche. Most recently, Ning Ning was seen in Vancouver, BC at Science World as part of the LIGHT: Illuminating Science & Art exhibition. She also participated in the 2010 Cultural Olympiad with a surveillance project, Whoo? - a parliament of robotic owls. Karen has exhibited internationally and performed worldwide, choreographing for camera, street and stage. When she is not busy making art or dancing, she studies aerial circus arts, handstands and Buddhism (not necessarily in that order). For more information about de Luna and her work, please visit her website at http://www.delunatic.net.

Artist Statement 

The Illuminated Body: Excerpts from an Atlas of Illness and Injury

The Illuminated Body grew out of my initial fascination with the way that scars and other imperfections on the skin act as souvenirs, portals to the past imprinted on the body of the present. Exploring the intersection and interplay of touch and sight, The Illuminated Body is a series of embossed, monochromatic self-portraits that reveal both visible and invisible illnesses and injuries as seen on the skin, while focusing on the fragility and resilience of the human envelope.

The sense of touch is inseparable from the largest organ of the human body, our skin. The liminality of skin led me to investigate touch both literally and figuratively. Touch is fundamental to the process of perception for all of the senses, including mind. In Buddhist philosophy, mind is considered to be a sixth sense, the place where phenomena are pieced together, recorded and edited. 

Touch is reciprocal. Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote about ‘Flesh’ as an animate sentience common to both human subjects and the surrounding environment, a presence that is both sensitive and sensible. I can't walk down the street or open my sock drawer without touching a world that is at the same time touching me; I can't feel the world without it also feeling me.

Although my background in dance predisposes me toward an embodied perspective, I am learning to listen not only to my body, but also to the world as it responds. This is a process of opening my awareness to the touch and feel of life itself, not just in art and art-making. By honing sensitivity, listening intently to the messages of my injuries, and thinking with my whole body, I begin to see with the soles of my feet and feel with my eyes. Sight and touch are inextricably intertwined and with awareness, attention and clarity of mind, the crucial role touch plays in acting as a base for the other sense perceptions becomes apparent. Through the wisdom of the body, acknowledging illness and injury becomes the first step in healing. Within The Illuminated Body is an acknowledgement and celebration of the fact that eyes can touch and skin can see.

Lynné Bowman Cravens

Lynné Bowman Cravens was born and raised in Austin, TX. She grew up learning painting, drawing, and sculpture from her mother, Brucie Bowman, who is an accomplished artist. Cravens was first introduced to photography as an art form during a summer workshop at The Art School at Laguna Gloria. Cravens received a BA in Photocommunications from St. Edward’s University in the spring of 2009. She is currently working toward her MFA in Photography at the University of North Texas, scheduled to graduate in May of this year. She currently resides in Denton, Texas.

Artist Statement: Vessel 

The series, Vessel, focuses on the body. Through meticulous physical distortions and transdisciplinary techniques I create pieces that deal with personal experiences, identity, and our physical forms. Vessel is autobiographical in nature, however each piece in the exhibition deals with the body in some way. We are forced to experience the world and each other through our physical bodies. Our body becomes a vessel for our thoughts and experiences, housing all of our hopes, fears, and memories. While each piece in the show addresses a different experience, the overall exhibition showcases the many complexities present in a single individual.