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.

Jessica Somers

Jessica Somers is a photographer specializing in historic photographic techniques and self-portraiture. Jessica has been in love with photography for most of her life. She was exposed to the act of picture making through her grandfather, an avid amateur photographer, and in the family bathroom-turned-darkroom after sunset. Here, her parents would allow her to witness actual magic as she stood over the chemical trays watching an image appear where only a simple white sheet of paper was before. As a kid she received a Kodak disc camera and became addicted to the act of expressing her individual view of the world from the 4 foot high perspective of a seven year old. Her height has since increased but her addiction continues.

Jessica's work has been exhibited nationally and is represented by the Catherine Couturier Gallery in Houston, TX. Her research on alternative processes and select photographs are published in the 3rd edition of The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes by Christopher James to be released in 2015. She is a recipient of the 2012 Artist Fellowship Award by the The Connecticut Office of the Arts. Jessica currently teaches photography throughout Connecticut and at the Lesley University College of Art and Design in Boston.

Artist Statement: Paper House

When I entered into marriage and domestic life I experienced an intersection between personal choices and societal expectations. Suddenly the traditional aspects of nesting I had previously deemed objectionable became desirable. I both loved and loathed the idea of myself as a sort of servant in my home.

Through the self-portrait series Paper House, I investigate which of my actions are genuine desires and which actions are inherited from societal expectations common to previous generations of American women. These photographs reference my struggles, my reflections and my fears through visual metaphor. While I do not wish to take for granted my healthy relationship and stable home, I acknowledge the challenge of maintaining my personal identity amid the expectations that come with such gifts. I accept that even between the strongest of partners an unexpected earthquake can come along and knock the house down. But an earthquake can never undo the effort to sustain that which you love and endure.

Aspen Hochhalter

Aspen Hochhalter is an Associate Professor of Art and the Photography Area Coordinator in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her work has been exhibited nationally and examines contemporary photographic themes as well as the crossover between digital technology and historic photographic processes.

Artist Statement: The 92/20 Self-portrait Series 

92/20 is a collection of 92 wet plate collodion ambrotype self-portraits created in 20 days during the summer of 2011. These very personal self-portraits speak to the construction and deconstruction of feminine identity. It was also an experiment in returning to not only the roots of photographic expression by utilizing one of the earliest photographic processes, but also a return to the bare essentials of photographing: a reliance on self, silver and the sun. Yet, since wet plate collodions have to be coated, exposed and developed in a matter of minutes--all while the light sensitive photographic emulsion is still wet - this nineteenth century process has an intriguing parallel to the instant gratification of our current digital age.

The images themselves are elusive sketches of a “self,” playing to the camera, flowing in and out of poses and clichés--juxtaposed with unexpected flaws, irregularities, missing pieces and unsettling cuts and tears. I revel in the mistakes, the odd textures and unexpected chemical smears and veils that emerge on the photograph--most of which serendipitously occur over an eye or mouth--chance deletions and desecrations of the form that create an intense emotional content for which I couldn’t have planned. With the 92 plates, I am now reconstructing what I deconstructed and fragmented with the camera, creating odd approximations of a whole. A sometimes unsettling reconstruction of self emerges: dismantled, fragmented and then stitched back together.

Chris Maliga

Chris Maliga is a photographer currently based in Boston, Massachusetts. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions nationally, most recently at Piano Craft Gallery in Boston, Nave Gallery in Somerville, Massachusetts, and PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont, among others. He serves as the Studio Manager for Photography at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Maliga has also taught courses and workshops in photography throughout New England. He has printed black-and-white photographs for Barbara Bosworth and Mike Mandel. Maliga holds a BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an AA in Photography from the University of Maine at Augusta.

Artist Statement: Dominion

Nature has served as a refuge for me throughout my life, alluring an inquiring mind with its at once tranquil and ever-fluctuating state. For my photographs, I search for secluded locations that lack the tell-tale signs of human habitation. I am as much interested in witnessing the undisturbed passing of time in these spaces as I am in exploring my own desire to be a part of the movements within them. In these places, I am rendered aware of my own fragility. Through performative interactions with the terrain and the adverse elements, I find myself immersed in a sense of both freedom and vulnerability. There are cycles at work within the natural world that seem to us to be endless, but only because they have carried on for so much longer than we have existed. Night passes to day, snow turns to water, vegetation blooms and then shrivels. For the short time in which the shutter is open, my body is a part of these rituals. To me, these vanishing seconds are a welcome source of rejuvenation. By committing that moment in time to the silver of film and paper, it achieves a permanence that neither I nor the weathered ground will ever truly know.

Jaime Johnson

Jaime Johnson grew up in Mississippi where the sounds of wild animals outside her window became her daily melody. Jaime received her BFA from the University of Mississippi in Imaging Arts and her MFA in Photography from Louisiana Tech University. Johnson was named a finalist for the 2014 Clarence John Laughlin award and her work has been shown nationally. Her series Untamed recently won the Grand Prize in the Maine Media Workshops international contest Character: Portraits and Stories that Reveal the Human Condition.

Untamed chronicles the intimate relationship of a feral woman and her surrounding natural environment. She collects the bones, branches, and flora of her world and treads with the animals, both dead and living. The cyanotype process shifts focus from potentially colorful landscapes and figures to patterns, textures, and the relationships of forms within the images. Discovery—both psychological and physical— is present and reveals each of us, whether human or animal, is a part of a shared experience. Untamed ultimately reflects upon the forms, the impermanence, and the interconnectedness of nature’s life.

Ashley Whitt

Ashley Whitt is a fine art photographer whose work deals with themes of duality within the self, psychological states, and mortality. She uses a variety of photographic techniques including dass transfers, digital manipulation in Photoshop, sculptural bookmaking, and traditional darkroom processes. Ashley is a Texas native and currently resides in Denton.

Ashley graduated from Texas Woman's University where she earned her MFA in Photography in 2012. She graduated from UT Arlington with a BFA in Photography in 2009. Ashley currently adjuncts in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for Dallas County and Collin County Community Colleges. Her work has been shown locally, nationally, and internationally including Texas, Vermont, California, China, and India.

Project Statement: The Haunted Mind

''In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your griefs may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.''

            - Nathanial Hawthorne, "The Haunted Mind" from "Twice Told Tales", 1851

The Haunted Mind is a body of work that addresses themes of duality, anxiety, and mortality. When my mother passed away five years ago, I became consumed by depression and anxiety. These images are visual representations of the fears and anxieties that exist within myself. Multiple figures inhabit the frame to depict internal conflicts and the duality that exists within the self. Inspiration for the series comes from literature, film noir, nightmares, and an obsession with death. The images are primarily created in wooded areas and isolated landscapes in order to visually depict the unconscious mind.

Using digital manipulation, multiple figures are montaged within each landscape to convey anxiety and duality within the self. The images are printed onto Dass transfer film and are transferred onto Stonehenge fine art paper. The transfer allows for manipulation, which can blur or distort parts of the image. This distortion created during the transfer process creates an ethereal, dreamlike aesthetic that alters the sense of reality in each image. The finished pieces are one of a kind and cannot be replicated.