Seeing Trees, Tree Portraits and THE FENCE 2020

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“Mothers are the most intimate of strangers. When we examine their lives, not through the lens of filial familiarity but through the fresh perspective of the adults we are today, what do we discover about them as women in their own right, as well as, products of their era and place,” states author and editor Samia Serageldin. 

“This series of photographs takes a fresh perspective to examining the writers’ lives, and those of their daughters, through portraits, spaces, and archival material. The writers provide commentary to each image through excerpts from their relevant works, adding a complementary dimension to the art. What do we discover about the relationship between mother and daughter? How do we view these women and their histories? What do we discover about ourselves? Mothers, Daughters, and the Writing Life sheds a fresh light on a primordial, complex, ever-evolving relationship,” Stacy Bloom-Rexrod artist and curator Block Gallery.  

Mothers, Daughters, and the Writing Life is an ongoing project of photographers Elizabeth Matheson and Barbara Tyroler working with writers who articulate these intimate intergenerational spaces through their essays in the upcoming anthology Mothers & Strangers, edited by Samia Serageldin and Lee Smith.

Six of the women writers Inspired by their essays in Mothers & Strangers, UNC Press include Belle Boggs, Jaki Shelton Green, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Jill McCorkel, Melody Moezzi, and Samia Serageldin

VISITATIONS, GIFTS FOR IMANI

For my childhood friend, Piedmont Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, family is her heart’s work. We reunited as seasoned artists, while she was working on the poem, i want to undie you, after the loss of her daughter Imani to cancer, and began our collaborative journey.

The series of images in Visitations, Portraits for Imani is the result of a yearlong project where together we scoured the family archives, the snaps and snippets of Imani’s life photographed by family and friends, 30 years from birth to deathbed. Through music, words and images, this work is a response to loss and a celebration of life, though the aesthetics of light and shadow, doors and cobwebs, and objects symbolic of transitions and memories, about loss and love, about the heart work of parenting.

 Visitations at The Fence 2018

Click Here for 2018 The FENCE  Gallery

THE FIGURE ABSTRACTED

Each of my water portraits is a figurative study of form and design. Yet, each is the story of a person and a place, a prolonged gaze through and upon the surface of water that transforms the body into a burst of multilayered reflections.

I create pool portraits of individuals, couples and groups; men, women, and children who use water for health and healing, grandparents and babies, first pregnancies, engagement portraits, children with disabilities and adults with arthritis in adapted aquatics classes.

In 2013 I began photographing children and teens with disabilities, particularly those on the autism spectrum as a program of the Homestead Pool Adapted Recreation & Inclusion swimming classes.

A recent public arts project, Rockin the Spectrum, is a mix of documentary and abstracted imagery portraying the struggles and joy experienced by these students and their instructors as they navigate the underwater environment while learning to swim and to trust those who guide them. These portraits were awarded a NC State Arts and Humanities award for the Public Arts Commission project “Into The Streets,” a series of impressionistic images from the project and are permanently installed at the Homestead Aquatic Center.

Click Here to See Adapted Aquatics Gallery

I welcome private commissions, in and out of the water. I offer services for families, schools, community pools, and health centers.

Click Here for Tree Portraiture

Click Here for Family Legacy Portraits

 Click Here for Traditional Family Portraits

Click Here for Portraits of Artists

This traveling exhibition series incorporates the voices of many artists, educators, university students, and families; exploring intimacy, familial attachment, and transitional issues, transforming traditional photographic portraiture into multi-layered creative portrayals; interweaving objects, landscapes, memories, and stories. Within the 10 years since its inception in Beijing, the project has attained a broader audience, addressing the multiple cultural contexts of environment, urbanization, and migration.

A 17’ photographic banner from this exhibition hangs in the UNC School of Public Health Atrium. UNC Professor of City and Regional Planning, Yan Song shared the auditorium for a slideshow and lecture, Urbanization in China: Critical Issues in an Era of Rapid Growth.

Click Here for slideshow and lecture at UNC Global

TRAVELING EXHIBIITION, Beijing Impressions

Beijing Impressions: Portraits of a Shifting Landscape is a traveling educational exhibition with discussion and lecture featuring multi layered collaged portraiture. It is hosted within Art Centers, Hospitals, University Galleries, and Public Art Spaces.

Contact Me if you are interested in discussing a water or land portrait or hosting a traveling exhibition!

The visual interpretations are inspired by Samm Tyroler-Cooper and Bai's poetic voices addressing the 'wildness and darkness' of 'The Sun Setting City Luo Ri Zhi Cheng.' A silk installation accompanies the exhibition is a collaboration with local fiber artist, Margaret Gignioux and was produced specifically for the UNC Global Education Center exhibition in 2012.