November 12 - February 2, 2013
- Curated by Peggy Shaw
- Reception: November 15, 6-8 p.m., Gallery Lounge, Curatorial Talk by Peggy Shaw at 7 p.m., music by the Parkland Guitar Ensemble
- January 31, additional lecture by exhibit artist S. Gayle Stevens, Gallery, 12pm
"Shift" reveals the experimental and exploratory spirit of today's photographers, whose use of modern photography processes and related technologies allow audiences to glimpse the world of familiar objects in startling new ways, according to Shaw, an associate professor in photography/video at Parkland.
"Photographers have always had to integrate creativity, technology, and process-responding to light, adjusting lens, translating pixels to paper," Shaw said in her curatorial statement. "As photography evolves, photographers must also, but what is truly revealing are the ways they respond: Open to both contemporary and historical processes now considered alternative, subject and process is twisted to reveal new ideas."
The exhibit participants comprise a mix of studio artists and faculty at several U.S. educational institutions, including Bruce Checefsky, director of the Reinberger Galleries and adjunct professor in liberal arts at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio; Dana Fritz, professor, Department of Art and Art History at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln; Richard Gray, associate professor of photography and chairperson of the Department of Art, Art History and Design at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana; Christa Kreeger Bowden, associate professor of art at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia; Joyce Lopez, studio photographer, Chicago; Michael Sherwin, assistant professor in photography and intermedia at West Virginia University in Morgantown; S. Gayle Stevens, instructor of photography at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois; and Sonja Thomsen, studio photographer, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Shaw received her Master of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her photography has been shown nationally and has won numerous awards in both photography and video, including fellowships from both the Illinois Arts Council and Arts Midwest/National Education Association Regional.
Working with a variety of lens-based equipment, such as digital cameras, webcams, video cameras, microscopes, and even scanners, each exhibiting artist reveals his or her viewpoint on either our natural world, structured worlds, and/or the body, Shaw said. "These works are not only captured, but created. New technology and processes do not replace the old but add to the options for artists to interpret, and then express their ideas."
Image: Bruce Checefsky, Dahlia Suki Yori No Shisha, archival pigment on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta paper, 24 x 30 Framed, 2011