Elizabeth Mead
Fictional Reality: The Photograph and Its Object
The exhibit will be on display through
November 18, 2021
Gallery hours are Tuesdays-Fridays 10-4 and Saturdays 1-4
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You are invited to come and meet the artist as she talks about the exhibition, influences behind the work and its installation.
The event is free and open to the public.We will be following all CDC Covid Guidelines and masks will be mandatory.
Photo credit: Corey Miller
Artist Biography
Elizabeth Mead's sculptures and drawings have been exhibited across the U.S. as well as in Australia, England, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Taiwan. She has designed more than two dozen theatrical productions including work with the internationally acclaimed, Tony award-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune. She has had over two dozen solo exhibitions and her sculpture, drawing, and photography have been included in more than fifty group exhibitions.
Elizabeth Mead's sculptures and drawings have been exhibited across the U.S. as well as in Australia, England, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Taiwan. She has designed more than two dozen theatrical productions including work with the internationally acclaimed, Tony award-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune. She has had over two dozen solo exhibitions and her sculpture, drawing, and photography have been included in more than fifty group exhibitions.
Artist Statement
I move back and forth between paper objects and the photographs I make of them. Reflections and transmitted light, glowing edges and silhouetted forms help them teeter between their being as objects and their being as phenomena of shadow and light. I use light, focal length, focus, and implied relations of scale in the photographs to construct the beholder's relation to the motif—the sculpture—in a way that insists powerfully on what I consider to be the most important visual effects they produce while at the same time offering a view that is absolutely different from any beholder's empirical experience of the sculpture.
It is important that the light in the photograph not be artificial. The only light source is from my studio window. The object and the photograph are instantly and clearly recognizable as in and of the world we share while at the same time bodying forth one that is fictional. Important too is that the image is not cropped. Framing the object within the moment the image is shot ties the fictional space of the photograph back again to the world we inhabit registering it at a particular moment in time.
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I move back and forth between paper objects and the photographs I make of them. Reflections and transmitted light, glowing edges and silhouetted forms help them teeter between their being as objects and their being as phenomena of shadow and light. I use light, focal length, focus, and implied relations of scale in the photographs to construct the beholder's relation to the motif—the sculpture—in a way that insists powerfully on what I consider to be the most important visual effects they produce while at the same time offering a view that is absolutely different from any beholder's empirical experience of the sculpture.
It is important that the light in the photograph not be artificial. The only light source is from my studio window. The object and the photograph are instantly and clearly recognizable as in and of the world we share while at the same time bodying forth one that is fictional. Important too is that the image is not cropped. Framing the object within the moment the image is shot ties the fictional space of the photograph back again to the world we inhabit registering it at a particular moment in time.
This exhibit is supported in part by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts through the Camp Family Foundations and the Paul Mellon Endowment.
Rawls Museum Arts gratefully acknowledges the support of the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, The City of Franklin, Southampton County, Franklin and Southampton County Charities. The Camp Foundation, The Business Consortium for Arts Support, Franklin Lumber Company, LLC, Manry Rawls Insurance, Franklin-Southampton Economic Development, Wells Fargo Advisors, Davenport and Company, LLC and our dedicated membership.
This exhibit is supported in part by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts through the Camp Family Foundations and the Paul Mellon Endowment.
Rawls Museum Arts gratefully acknowledges the support of the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, The City of Franklin, Southampton County, Franklin and Southampton County Charities. The Camp Foundation, The Business Consortium for Arts Support, Franklin Lumber Company, LLC, Manry Rawls Insurance, Franklin-Southampton Economic Development, Wells Fargo Advisors, Davenport and Company, LLC and our dedicated membership.
