Dinner Table Conversation

Dinner Table Conversation

This image was selected into the Charles Allis Art Museums Juried Show Forward: A Survey of Wisconsin Art Today.  I'm always wondering when I create a series, does it stand up as a body of work or are there only one or two strong images in the completed series? So I entered two images that I didn't enter in the Racine Art Museums Wisconsin Photography 2009 Juried exhibition to see how they would fair. One made it in and one didn't. It gives me a little more confidence that the Life in Miniature series stands up as a whole. Since I haven't tried to show the Life in Miniature series yet and have been so caught up with producing my latest Book Passages series it gives me hope that there will be a venue interested in exhibiting this work in the future.

The exhibit opens on Wednesday February 24th from 5:30pm to 8:30pm.

Anticipated email:

The Charles Allis Art Museum would like to congratulate you on your acceptance into the juried exhibition Forward: A Survey of Wisconsin Art Now. The jurors Graeme Reid, Assistant Director of the Museum of Wisconsin Art and Martha Glowacki, Co-Director of the Wisconsin Academy’s James Watrous Gallery both expressed that the more than 260 entrees represented possibly the best body of work they had ever seen for a juried exhibition. They selected your piece Dinner Table Conversation for inclusion.

Wisconsin Photography 2009

I am thrilled to have two of my fine art photographs from a series I created last year called "Life in Miniature"excepted into the juried exhibition, Wisconsin Photography 2009. The exhibition will be at the Racine Art Museum's Wustum Museum of Fine Arts from August 9 - November 28, 2009. This series revisited the theme of family in the context of fruits and vegetables taking on the roll of family. The miniature furniture adds a familiarity people can relate to while the juxtaposition creates an air of mystery and restraint. I want this work to challenge the viewer's boundaries and experiences for their disclosure and acceptance of family. To help force this viewpoint the images are kept small (4x5 inches) so that the viewer needs to get up-close and personal with the visual.

When I work within the realm of the institution of the family I am reminded that everyone comes to these life experiences differently. Families are filled with a sense of mystery for those on the outside. Secrets, perplexities, coherent, loyal and emotional are just a few adjectives that color peoples family experiences. It is these feelings and expressions of family that I have explored visually through-out the years offering many different interpretations as I would revisit familiar and similar themes. The exploration of the family offers an institution that is always evolving while its core values and principals remain unchanged.