Artist Index

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Artist Statements & Biographies

Dian Durant
Artist Statement:
“If I could rewrite the little ditty ‘bout Jack and Diane, I’d be the football star.”

This text creates the narrative voice for one of the photographs in my newest body of work, "Stories, 1986-88". Putting a new spin on old histories as my daughter stands in for a youthful me—the one I remember and the one I was never quite allowed to be—these deadpan portraits paired with short narrative texts create juxtapositions, dichotomies, and nostalgias, bringing the past into the present as we reimagine my childhood stories. Rooted in the image-text relationship, "Stories 1986-88" addresses the role of snapshots, family records and relics, the myth of the photograph, and the myth of memories. Though I can't change the past, I can rephotograph it.

Bio:
Diane Durant is Associate Professor of Instruction and Director of the Comer Collection of Photography at the University of Texas at Dallas where she holds a PhD in Aesthetic Studies. She serves on the university's Committee for the Support of Diversity and Equity as well as the Social Justice Council for the WNBA's Dallas Wings organization. Diane is a member of both the Board of Directors for the Cedars Union, a non-profit arts incubator in North Texas, and the Society for Photographic Education's LGBTQ Caucus Leadership Team. She is also Chair of the SouthCentral Chapter. In 2018, Diane was named as one of four inaugural Carter Community Artists with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. Her first monograph, Stories, 1986-88, was released by Daylight Books in 2020. More often than not, she eats cake for breakfast.

Steven Edison
Artist Statement:
Traveling in subways forces people to come literally face to face with strangers in close quarters. Mostly, people seem to put on their public faces and expressions avoiding and indicating very little about their private thoughts and feelings. These images were made in the Paris Metro system while I traveled from one destination to another in Paris. I would try to freeze these moments when people were not aware of what their faces revealed. Most of the time I was working, I would hold the camera in the crook of my arm and look away from the subjects when pressing down on the shutter so as not to distract them from their private thoughts and expressions. Often as soon as someone sees or becomes aware that they are subject of the photographer's gaze, they become self-conscious, and their faces and expressions change and those moments that I was looking to photograph would be lost.

Bio:
"The camera works to document the external, but more importantly, magnifies the mysteries which exist within one's self" How does emotion impact memory? How does the familiar slide into the unknown?

Steve's images begin to dissolve into a study about our solitary existence. His images reveal over and over the private moments people experience in public places. Not just an observer, Steve is present with us, describing but also raising questions about what we think we see. Steve thrives on creating fresh and authentic images while he documents both his and the viewer's perceptions and common experiences we share in life.

Sofia Fernandes-Garcia
Artist Statement:

Every country has food that is unique to its culture, agriculture, resources, and history. It is often incorporated into rituals of preparation and meaning. Food preparation within a culture is a form of tradition, passed down within the family to every new generation. These traditions create memorable moments and over time they can create a meaning, understanding, or realignment of "home" or "self." Our everyday experiences with food create a cultural, ethnic, religious, and social sense of belonging. Something as simple as a corn husk can spark a chain of memories to someone who grew up eating their grandmother's tamales. However, authenticity plays a meaningful role in finding cultural identity through meals. Seeing Mexican cuisine represented with ingredients that are not part of its gastronomical foundation skews people's perception of that culture

Bio:
Sofia specializes in analog photography and alternative processes such as lumen prints and photo transfers. Drawing from her experience from growing up in a bicultural home in the US, her photographs regularly explore the relationship between food, authenticity, culture, stereotypes, and identity. Her work is produced with the intention to spark ideas and conversations relating to cultural identity presented through food presentation.

Sofia graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Colorado Denver in 2021. Her work has been featured in the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Barrett Art Center, Las Lagunas Gallery, Pirate Contemporary Art, Emmanuel Gallery, and has had work installed on Auraria Campus and the CU Denver Arts building. Sofia currently resides in her hometown of Golden, Colorado.

Claudia Hollister
Artist Statement:
As our lives have changed during the COVID-19 lockdowns took on a 100dayproject on Instagram. My challenge, photograph and print a cyanotype, posting on Instagram images from my garden for 100 days.

Capturing the beauty of my flowers in a different light evolved from not knowing what day it was, into a 100-day exploration of the calm and joy I felt working and cultivating images from my garden.

My current cyanotype prints from this spring 2021, continue to bring a new perspective, as I expand my interest into creating still life compositions with flowers from my garden. The prints document the cycle of seasonal blooms in a unique and beautiful format. The process I use to create my cyanotype prints starts with me photographing my floral still life in the studio with my iPhone. I then send the image to my computer and create a negative transparency film.  I then sensitize the paper with a solution of Ferric Ammonium Citrate and Potassium Ferricyanide. Once the paper has dried in a darkroom, I then place the negative film over the sensitized paper, under glass and print it in the sun. Wash out the solution and have a positive image.

Bio:
A professional sculptor, porcelain artist and designer, Claudia Hollister previously designed for Reed & Barton Silversmiths, Orrefors Crystal, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Godiva Chocolates. Claudia has shown at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum of Art, The American Craft Museum and Cartier Jewelers. After starting her porcelain studio she was commissioned to create large-scale site-specific installations for children's hospitals, corporations and hotels.

Hollister began teaching encaustic painting at The Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2012 and was instrumental in developing the successful guest artist workshop series. Claudia is known for her encaustic still life paintings focusing on the vessel, as a voluptuous sculptural form.

Intrigued with a process for printing in the sun without dangerous chemicals, she started making Cyanotype prints in 2014. Currently Claudia prints during the summer creating images from her garden as stand alone prints, also incorporating them as grounds for her encaustic work.

Claudia paints and prints full time in her Portland Oregon studio. She holds a BFA from the University of Oregon.

Lori Law
Artist Statement:
My photos are stories often inspired by the overlooked. I utilize nostalgia, sentiment and sometimes humor to convey the tale. We are surrounded by moments and things that have something to say.

Bio:
Ohio based photographer; Lori Law has been sharing her photography since 2013. She has participated in juried art exhibitions in Findlay, Lima, Mansfield and Van Wert.

Cedar Marie
Artist Statement:
My creative work is inspired by people who work on the water and investigates the cultural shifts of small fishing communities. Commercial fishing informs my artistic practice and allows me to create artwork that reveals a broad aesthetic inquiry into the preservation of cultural traditions through living experiences. As a conceptual artist, my artwork is site-specific; the history of a place, its people, and the analysis of cultural materials are intimately tied to the artwork I produce in order to express the conditions in which people work and live. It is necessary for me to step outside of the usual studio boundaries and into the field, to place the artistic process, which is often practiced in isolation, in direct conversation with a site's community. This way of working allows me to situate my creative investigations at the intersection of art, visual culture, and social inquiry.

Bio:
Cedar Marie received an MFA in art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison She is a recipient of several fellowship awards including an Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Creative Arts Fellowship (OVAC) and an OVAC Art Writing & Curatorial Fellowship. Her artwork is cited in selected publications including, "Re/Theorizing Writing Histories of Rhetoric" (edited by Michelle Ballif, Southern Illinois University Press) and "Art and Queer Culture, 1885-present" (Lord & Meyer, Phaidon Press). Her articles and essays have appeared in Art Focus Oklahoma (OVAC) and First American Art Magazine, which strives to foster historical resilience, cross-cultural understanding, and reintegration of humans into the natural world.

Jake Martinez
Artist Statement:
Growing up in the Antelope Valley, I watched homes and businesses change from inhabited and open to abandoned and closed. My photographs function as an archive to preserve the memory of these buildings, and the histories they represent. Scattered throughout the vast landscape are deserted homes and businesses, money pits and projects neglected by the community. Commercial buildings seem to change occupancy every few months and neighbors come and go from increasingly derelict homes.

Schools and recreational destinations have diminished. I used to explore recreational lands - now closed to the public or under ceaseless renovations - and fish the waters - now dried to ponds, or playas, dry lake beds. Campgrounds have closed, their decaying residue left on the roadside. I photograph these changes and witness their effects on the community. I lived among and within these buildings and landscapes most of my life, witnessing the changes firsthand, over time.

Bio:
Jake is a photographer based in Palmdale, CA. He began his photography practice while pursuing a BA in Psychology at California State University, Northridge. His work is influenced by firsthand experience witnessing detritus left behind in the Antelope Valley and watching homes and businesses change from inhabited and open to abandoned and closed.

J. Fredric May
Artist Statement:
I am a former photojournalist and filmmaker. During open-heart surgery in 2012, I suffered a major stroke leaving me legally blind and subject to vivid visual hallucinations. This life event changed my artistic vision, opening up an entirely new visual style. With a life-long habit of experimentation, I picked up my iPad and started to explore. Taking those facial fragments that filled half of my lost visual field and utilizing imaging software that corrupts visual data, I was effectively able to replicate what was happening with information within my own brain.

Bio:
A graduate of Brooks Institute, J. Fredric May received his Bachelor of Science in Commercial Photographic Science with a Minor in Color Technology and was later accepted into the prestigious Eddie Adams Workshop ll in 1989.

He made his living as a documentarian and commercial photographer traveling all over the world, telling visual stories with a signature style of bold color and confrontational composition. He won numerous state and regional honors.

As a documentarian, May directed more than 50 corporate and industrial films and helped raise more than 7 million dollars for nonprofit organizations. He has won Telly and Cine Awards for his creative film work and national awards for his corporate and nonprofit clients.

During open heart surgery in 2012, he suffered a major stroke leaving him legally blind and subject to vivid visual hallucinations. This life event opened up an entirely new visual style. The result is his current project, Apparition: Postcards From Eye See You.

Editha Mesina
Artist Statement:
In the series Immigrant Encounters, I photograph Filipino immigrants. These photos of my father were taken one year before he died. An immigrant from the Philippines, he came to the U.S. in the late 1960s to seek a better life. As a musician in the post-war Philippines, he performed in Big Bands and U.S. Army orchestras. When the dwindling demand for saxophone players forced him to seek other work, he immigrated to the U.S., eventually finding his way to Philadelphia and taking a job as an accountant. He was 96 years old in these photographs. With the recent violence against elderly Asian Americans being scapegoated as the source of the Coronavirus, I want to present his portrait as an example of a man who worked hard all his life to provide for his immediate family, as well as his many brothers and sisters and their families in the Philippines. His name was Eduardo. There are millions of immigrants like him in the U.S.

Bio:
Editha Mesina is a photographer whose work mines the various concerns of portraiture, its public and private spheres, to speak of individual and collective identities. She has exhibited in New York at the Cuchifritos Gallery, Artist Space, Clocktower Gallery, Ceres Gallery, A.I.R. Gallery, as well as at the West Kortright Center, East Meredith; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown; and internationally in Pingyao, China and in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts Alex G. Nason Fellow in Photography.

Rita Montlack
Artist Statement:
The two images represented here were created during the pandemic when I was objecting to being fenced in and felt super fortunate to be outside photographing my favorite places and things. Manipulating my images, a major part of my work, forces me to pay close attention to detail and the element of surprise is always the end result for me and hopefully for the viewer as well. This work is based on recent photographs which have been manipulated and altered in Photoshop.

Bio:
A native of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Rita Montlack pursued a liberal arts education at the University of Miami where she attained her B.A. degree. Her arts education includes instruction in Painting and Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Photography at Cuyahoga Community College, and Digital Photography at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado. She has enjoyed a long and gratifying career as a professional artist, migrating over time through media including fiber and painting prior to her arrival in the world of photography and computers. Her recent work often incorporates hand-painted elements as well as collage.

Robyn Moore
Artist Statement:
Being in the Land is a series of photographic works inspired by my desire to make contact with the memory embodied by landscapes. By making aspects of the land's more latent phenomena visible and material I hope to understand more about its biological capabilities and significance. I rely on my art practice to facilitate empathy and the imagining of others' worlds, lives, histories and experiences and, in so doing, hope for a kind of access to what otherwise would remain lost or irretrievable.

The inky sensuousness of photopolymer gravure allows me to explore the deeply-embedded but subtle emotional and psychological undertones of what persists in the land: human histories, animal histories, deep time and the limits of our own knowledge. I hope the images from Being in the Land materialize and amplify this sense of felt presence, which seems both to emanate from the land as much as reverberate throughout it.

Bio:
Robyn Moore is a photographer and filmmaker originally from Virginia. She holds a PhD in Visual Arts (Photomedia) from Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney, in Sydney, Australia and a MFA in Photography and Experimental Film from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her research interests include biosemiotics, phenomenology, empathic imagining, and the ways in which visibly material photographic practices can encourage new ways of seeing, sensing, and interacting with other beings and landscapes. Robyn has had her work exhibited widely and has taught photography and film at numerous academic institutions including Delta State University, Marietta College and Sydney College of the Arts. Currently Robyn is an Associate Professor of Photography in the Department of Art and Design at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky.

Paul Murray
Artist Statement:
A Rhode Island native and extensive traveler, Paul is an internationally recognized color photographer and skilled journalistic writer. His expression in images, words, and design reflects a blend of his lifelong interests in art, nature, technology, aviation, urban life, and societal change. His approach to photography and life is to remain open, trust his instincts and discard labels that are divisive. He uses technology to increase his creative options and productivity but not to replace his vision and responsibility.

After residing in Boston, Tokyo, and Chicago, Paul returned to Jamestown, RI, a few years ago. He exhibits throughout the United States, has had several solo exhibits in Cuba, and has served on several art association boards. His skills have been recognized at the highest levels of achievement at the Salmagundi Club of New York, Copley Society of Art, Providence Art Club, Mystic Museum of Art, Plymouth Center for the Arts, and the Cape Cod Art Center.

Bio:
Color, light, and gesture are important elements in my work. My use of these varies intrinsically across landscapes, nature, people, and culture. My choices of timing, perspective, and composition are intended to draw the viewer into the setting and moment. Often, I try to pattern my pursuit of opportunities to the natural tempo of what I see.

In creating art, I try to remain open to possibilities, trust my instincts, and discard labels that are divisive. I use technology to increase my creative options and productivity, but not to replace my vision and responsibility.

Denise M. Oehl
Artist Statement:
My relationship to my environment is voyeuristic. The choice of imagery is diverse but the sentiment remains the same.

This body of work is about a fleeting atmospheric moment. It is using light to catch an ephemeral instant significant to me. An ordinary glimpse. There is allure in the glimpse, an inkling that there is remarkable imagery in the everyday. I am representing everywehre and nowhere.

The images are captured on a medium format analogue cameras. I love loading, the click of a button. I am very drawn to the ritualistic nature printing my images in the darkroom. Presently I am printing using Hand Coated Palladium/ Lithium process. Counting drops and coating the paper and exposing.

Bio:
Denise moved from Northwest Ohio to New York City to study painting at The School of Visual Arts. She eventually began using photography as her medium of choice. First with Pinhole and then moving to a medium format film camera. She is particularly drawn to the clicks and whirs of the camera when loading and shooting film. Continuing with being engaged with the hands on approach, she prints her images in the darkroom, making unique prints with an alternative process. This final part of her creative process is critical to her evolution.

She has exhibited widely in the Hudson Valley, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Maryland, California and Internationally.

Robert Oehl
Artist Statement:
My diaristic self portraits are self- deprecating, vulnerable, and histrionic; they are, for me, explorations of an alter ego. I am a process oriented photographer using rudimentary tools. My photographs are made with simple 4 x 5 pinhole, and zone plate cameras. Requiring long exposures, these cameras better record movement and the passage of time, giving the images a dark, dreamlike, softly focused look. I develop my film in caffenol, a coffee based home brew developer. My prints are made with a lithium palladium and ammonium ferric oxalate emulsion that is hand coated onto cotton rag paper. The photographs are contact printed under ultraviolet light, then and cleared in water and citric acid baths. Sometimes, I age and patinate the photograph by waxing, rubbing, staining, and/or scratching the surface. My prints are not editioned, but produced individually and are unique. In a predominantly digital world, my process employs only film, paper, and chemical manipulation.

Bio:
Robert Oehl was born in Detroit, Michigan. After graduating from Michigan State University, he moved to New York City, eventually receiving his MFA in Photography and Printmaking from Pratt Institute. While at Pratt, Robert studied with Phil Perkis, and became enchanted with analog, alternative processes and using pinhole cameras to make self portraits. Robert has shown his work in numerous publications, as well as group and solo exhibitions. He is currently based in Hudson, NY.

Holly Romano
Artist Statement:
In this current body of work, I am documenting my behavioral observation of my children, brought on by the perpetual stay-home orders during the CoVid pandemic. Having consistent, non-stop time with them for the past year, I am able to notice the in-between moments of their day-to-day activities - how they intentionally spent their downtime, how they react to home-schooling and seclusion, and how they relate within the family and the physical elements in their environment. Human behavior is constantly evolving during the early years of development and personalities and relationship dynamics continue to bend and change. In this time of isolation, I am examining how they make sense of their identities, how they navigate evolving relationships, how they define boundaries within our family, and how quickly those things can shift at a moment's notice.

Bio:
Holly Romano lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. Her paintings and photographs are rooted in the complexities of female identity and being a mother — from caring for children to maintaining a household. She also uses alternative photography processes and mixed media to explore the beauty and vastness of the natural world and hopes to promote wonder and appreciation.

Romano holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bowling Green State University. After a successful career in the graphic design field, she now focuses on fine art photography, painting, mixed media, and alternative processes. Her award-winning artwork has been selected for juried shows and is exhibited nationally.

Holly Simcoe
Artist Statement:
I am interested in engaging that which is unknowable in order to navigate the psyche that opens and flourishes when confronted with the need for mystery. To this end, figures amidst architectural fragmentation and imagery from the natural world inhabit spaces that are notional, intangible, liminal and surreal. They are not realistically embedded in their settings and this creates tension in posture and gesture. The imagery of passageways, stairs, orifices, arches and other architectural fragmentations reinforce this. I sometimes interject sculptural imagery that alludes to the antiquity and ubiquitous-ness of ancient archetypes as they emerge in my artworks. Narratives are subliminally suggested but can only be partially decoded with the assistance of titles that are as fragmentary as the image sources I employ. My intention is that narrative be felt rather than understood. I am interested in a reality in the context of an uncomfortable beauty that can only be intangibly accessed.

Bio:
Barbara Simcoe's formal art training was at the University of Illinois, Urbana and the University of North Texas, Denton. She is a Professor on the faculty of Art and Art History at the University of Nebraska and has taught painting and drawing since 1998. Barbara has shown widely nationally and in European venues in many invitational, juried exhibitions and solo exhibitions. She has had numerous one-person exhibitions in the States, awards and grants. In 2004 she received a Fulbright Scholarship. She was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome in 2014. Fall 2019 she was juried into the 12th Annual Pollux Exhibition in Barcelona, Spain. Stylistically she works with realistic figuration inhabiting psychological, archetypal and symbolic spaces that reference the use of methodologies related to Surrealist practice.

Omid Tavakoli
Artist Statement
This series of works titled Over Policing investigates the protest and civic unrest focused on the police since the murder of George Floyd. Using images from media outlets and protestors I digitally manipulate the footage to emphasize the local and federal governments' response to peaceful protesters all over the world. Protesters against police violence have been greeted by militarized officers with tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and batons. In Sea of Cops, I multiply the figures of State troopers in full swat gear creating a wave of police officers this wave is then duplicated repeatedly until there is an overwhelming accumulation of dark figures completely covering the bottom half of the canvas creating a horizon line on the stark white paper.

The series represents our current police state with over-policing and overfunding that occurs on the city, state, and federal levels. It also looks at how black and brown bodies and specific neighborhoods are policed. Growing up in a lakefront city I’ve always been warned to respect the lake and to be careful around the water, to be aware of the danger of large bodies of water like rip tides, and sudden storms. Being a Black male I have also been constantly told to respect the police, to be careful around them, to watch out cause you never know when you’ll be swept away.

The Black Lives Matter movement has brought a magnifying glass to the funding received by police throughout America and has led to a call to defund the police by redistributing those funds into the community through education, social work, and outreach. From a distance, the works look like a black and blue blob of ink, as the viewer gets closer they start to see markings and as they investigate further they see the bigger picture much like all the issues that made 2020 such a monumental year.

Bio:
Omid Tavakoli is a Cleveland-based conceptual artist and curator whose work revolves around themes related to identity, gender, media, land use, protest, and pop culture. The most recent series have explored cultural identity and focused on their African-American and Iranian roots given contemporary cultural contexts in both America and Iran from a feminist perspective.

After completing undergraduate studies at Cleveland State University, Tavakoli received an art scholarship to complete a year-long Post-Baccalaureate at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, OH. He then received a graduate assistantship and earned an MFA in Print Media and Photography from Kent State University in Kent, OH in 2019.

Jeremy Underwood
Artist Statement:
Human Debris is a commentary on what humans leave in the natural landscape. The project spotlights the environmental condition of our waterways through the building of site-specific sculptures assembled out of harvested debris collected from the beach. Each found material lends itself to a new creation, encompassing the former life of the debris into each sculpture. These objects are simply artifacts to support the work, photographed in interaction with the landscape, then left to be discovered. This work challenges viewers to reflect upon our consumer culture, the relationship we have with our environment, and the pervasion of pollution.

Bio:
Jeremy Underwood’s work embodies our complicated relationship with the environment and the contemporary landscape, focusing on the tension between nature and culture shaping these physical spaces. Jeremy has been published in Photo District News and named an emerging talent by Lens Culture magazine. He has received a number of grants and fellowships from such institutions as the Society for Photographic Education, the University of Houston and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Recent exhibitions include the Houston Center for Photography, Fotofest and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. His recent research project entails collaboration with the Colorado Art Ranch, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, and the US Fish and Wildlife, exploring wilderness stewardship along Massachusetts’s marine and coastal region. Jeremy received his MFA from the University of Houston in addition to study at the University of Central Lancashire in England.