Notes Along a Shallow Margin

DreamBox Gallery // WOW Frequency present:
PHOTOGRAPHY by NANCY FEWKES – Notes Along a Shallow Margin
and The Multiplication of Eggs: Experiments and Contraptions

September 1 – 30, 2015
Opening reception with the artist present: Saturday, September 12, 6 – 9pm

The exhibition, Notes Along a Shallow Margin, is a photographic study of Spring Lake, a meander of the Illinois River, with the American lotus as its primary focus. The project is framed as a field study, and documents the relationship between this native plant, its life cycle and changing environment.

In the process of documentation, Nancy Fewkes has been building a story with her images that conveys a sense of the connectedness of place, inhabitant, and observer. The true perspective of the subject sought by a scientific study is abstracted by subjectivity. As the observer becomes a part of the conversation, the work that emerges in the field suggests a reflection on life, death and time.

The physical qualities of the lotus plant — the persistent strength of its stem, the vulnerability of its momentary bloom, and its deeply rooted tuber—emerge in these images from the complexity of their symbiotic and interdependent colonies. From the murk–not fully explained or understood chaos–comes an intuitive order, and notes of a process of transformation that involves the act of being present.

NANCY FEWKES has been a part of the School of Art at Illinois State University as a photography instructor and academic advisor since 2002, and assistant director since 2005. From 1993 through 2000, she worked as assistant director and manager of exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. She received her MFA from Arizona State University (1993), BA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago (1988) and BA in Rhetoric from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign (1981).
Her work has been exhibited at The Light Factory, NC, Cardinal Strich University, WI, Mclean County Art Center, IL, Northern Indiana Arts Association, IN, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ, and Elaine Horwich Gallery, AZ, among others.

Website: dreamboxgallery.com