Anna Strickland
Series
Given Series, 2011 – ongoing
The “Given Series” revolves around my sense of spirituality with three interconnecting subsets: portraits of friend’s hands holding their favorite natural objects, photographs and quotes about light and iconic hand gestures from a variety of Buddha statues. One of the ideas of “Given” is that everyday no matter our mood or circumstance we are ‘given’ so many things just by waking up in the world and moving through the day. The sun rises, the dew evaporates from a plant, the tide comes in, the bird alights on the tree and a small rock awaits our discovery. Whether we choose to recognize and or acknowledge all that is given to us in a day, is up to us.
For the hand ‘offerings’ I asked friends to hold their favorite natural objects in their hands. I also have a number of what I call ‘counterpoint’ photographs of everything from road kill to a monk self-immolating which are dispersed among the hand offerings. They also represent what is ‘given’ to us everyday. The hand ‘offerings’ and ‘counterpoints’ are palladium with gum-bichromate on Japanese gampi paper.
Anna Strickland
“There are few defining things that make me the person I am today. I spent my teenage years in Japan which shaped my aesthetic development; I was a VISTA volunteer after graduating from high school on the Oglala Sioux Reservation, Pine Ridge, South Dakota which forever politicized me and in my early twenties I lived in Italy where I experienced art history alive everyday and attended the Academia di Bella Arte in Venice. But most memorable was spending a year and half traveling and camping from Europe through Asia which included trekking in the Himalayas.
I always appreciated my education and considered it such a wonderful luxury that it made perfect sense for me to chose teaching as my avocation after completing my MFA in 1982. Like many recent graduates I taught in many art schools and universities but was fortunate in 1986 to be hired by the Photography Department of Rhode Island School of Design to teach a course in my specialty; Antique and Alternative Photography. I have continued teaching a variety of courses since that time at RISD; many of them collaborative with other departments, including a yearly course that spends 6 weeks in Paris every winter. It is at RISD where my teaching and work have flourished for over 25 years now.
I came to photography through printmaking and consider antique photo processes a wonderful marriage of the two. I was from my very beginnings a mixed media artist and morphed rather easily into installation. My work is inspired by a voracious reading habit from poetry to literature to the sciences. My use of photography has increased through the years, even though I continue to use other media in my installations. I feel that photography has become the driving force in my work. Often one photographic image having been captured will resonate within me like a wonderful line of a poem and then become the muse for all the other media employed in an installation.”
2016 – “Given” Christian Duvernois Gallery, New York, New York
2016 – “From the Faraway Nearby” Tilt Gallery, Scotsdale, Arizona
2013 – “Given Installation”, Medium Gallery, Month of Photography, Bratislava, Slovakia
2012 – “Given Installation”, Tilt Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona
2010 – “The Ladder Series”, Galerie Spéos, Paris, France
2008 – “Mind the Gap Installation”, WaterFall Arts, Belfast, Maine
2007 – “Garden Series”, Dupif Photo Studio, Paris, France
1999 – New Installation Work, McKillop Gallery, Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island
1998 – “She Who Looks Back”, Medium Gallery, Month of Photography, Bratislava, Slovakia
1997 – “Memory Palace Installation”, Ziva Gallery Bratislava, Slovakia
1993 – “Pueblo Installation”, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, Texas
1993 – “Pueblo Installation”, Galérii Cypriana Majerníka, Bratislava, Slovakia
1990 – Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA
1987 – Schaefer Gallery, Gustavus Adolphus College, MN
1982 – Vision Gallery, Boston, MA
1982 – Gallery 11, Tufts University, Medford, MA
2014 – “Fact or Fantasy”, Kiernan Gallery, Lexington, VA
2014 – “3 Views”, Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, New York
2011 – “Evolutionaries: Art and Healing, HCCC, Houston, Texas
2011 – “Poetry Festival”, Waterfall Arts Belfast, Maine
2010 – “Longing for Depth: Nature and Spirit”, Room with a View Gallery, Fotofest Biennial 2010, Houston, Texas
2007 – “Re:Sourcing: Sustainable Inspiration” Waterfall Arts Belfast, Maine
2006 – “Texture”, ALL Arts and Literature Laboratory, New Haven, Connecticut
2002 – “First To See The Light”, Antique and Alternative Photography, Quay School of Art Gallery, Wanganui, New Zealand
1999 – “Exploring New Technologies” Photographic Resource Center, Boston, Massachusetts
1997 – “Waking Dreams”, Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma
1997 – “Dix Artistes Americains A La Laiterie”, Strasbourg-Boston Sister City Exchange Exhibition at Strasbourg City Hall, Strasbourg, France
1997 – Memory Palace Installation,”Untraditional Photography: Women in Photography”, Brush Art Gallery, Lowell, Massachusetts
1994 – “Breda Photographica”, A Summer International Photography Festival with work installed throughout the city of Breda, The Netherlands
1989 – School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Faculty Exhibition, Boston, Massachusetts
1988 – “Cross Currents,” an exchange between San Francisco Camerawork and the Photographic Resource Center, Boston; Exhibited at the Bank of Boston (Sept) and SF Camerawork (Oct)
1988 – “On View,” new work from Wellesley College faculty, Wellesley College Museum of Art, Wellesley, Massachusetts
1986 – “Seven Photographers – The Large Print,” Manchester College, Manchester, Connecticut
1985 – “Empire State College Alumnae Show – A juried exhibition,” Pyramid Gallery, Rochester, New York
1984 – “Alternative Image II,” John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin
1983 – “Photography 1983: An Invitational,” Galleries of the Claremont Colleges, Claremont, California
2015 “Anna Atkins Cyanotypes”, Manual RISD Museum: Issue 4 Blue
2014 “Fact or Fantasy”, Kiernan Gallery, Lexington, Kentucky
2013 “Month of Photography”, Bratislava, Slovakia
2010 “The Ladder Series”, Galerie Spéos, Paris, France
2007 “Garden Series”, Dupif Photo Studio, Paris, France
1998 “Month of Photography”, Bratislava, Slovakia
2010 “Longing for Depth: Nature and Spirit”, Room with a View Gallery,
Fotofest Biennial 2010, Houston, TX
1994 “Breda Photographica”, A Summer International Photography Festival with work installed
throughout the city of Breda, Netherlands
1988 “Cross Currents,” an exchange between San Francisco Camerawork and the Photographic
Resource Center, Boston. Exhibited at the Bank of Boston and SF Camerawork
1984 “Alternative Image II” John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
1983 “Alternative Image: An Aesthetic and Technical History of Non-traditional Photographic
Printing Processes” John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
1980 “New England Photography: Into the 80’s,” a traveling exhibition on tour though 1981
2015 Artist in Residence Chrysler Museum Glass Studio
2014 Rhode Island School of Design Part Time Faculty Grant for other Media
2004 Residency at Anderson Ranch Art Center, Colorado
1997 Rhode Island School of Design Faculty Grant
1992 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
1992 Rhode Island School of Design Faculty Grant
1991 Finalist Award in Photography Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1987 MacDowell Colony residency, Peterborough, NH