Return Trips
23 Sandy Gallery was pleased to present Return Trips, photographs by Bea Nettles September 6 through September 29, 2007. Nettles’ structured black-and-white images combine three smaller photographs to form a triptych-like band at the top with a single large image below to form visual stories that are both autobiographical and narrative.
Artist Statement
I have spent more than thirty years as an exhibiting artist and explored various approaches to photography including mixed media, alternative processes, black and white, dye transfer printing, and artist’s books. Throughout this time, the themes in my work have been consistently autobiographical and narrative. My most recent body of work is Return Trips. My travels to Italy, Spain, Morocco, Nova Scotia, and several states in the USA including North Carolina, Maine, New Mexico, Illinois and Florida are reflected in this work. I have been combining these images with portraits and glimpses of my daily routine in ways that deal with the layered and cyclical nature of time and the sense of place and memory that I experience strongly, perhaps more strongly as the years go by.
Biography
The exhibition career of Bea Nettles began in 1970 when her work was shown in “Photography Into Sculpture,” at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Recognition as an experimental photographic artist followed and her work has been featured in over two hundred exhibitions throughout the world.
Nettles’ work is found in history texts including Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being (Abrams, History of Women in Photography (Abbeville Press), World History of Photography (Abbeville Press), Photographers Encyclopeaedia International (M Auer, Switzerland), and The Photography Collector’s Guide (NY Graphic Society). Her work has been regularly reviewed in the media; The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Art in America, Art Week, Saturday Review, Art News, and the photography magazines American Photographer, Popular Photography, Modern Photography. It has been featured internationally in magazines in Italy and France.
Over 26 public collections contain her work and she has received two National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowships and grants from the New York and Illinois State Arts Councils.
Nettles has taught photography to over one thousand students since 1970. In addition her classic textbook, Breaking the Rules: A Photo Media Cookbook has reached two generations of readers. She has delivered lectures and workshops internationally and is widely recognized for her innovations in mixed media photography and photographic books.23 Sandy Gallery
623 NE 23rd Ave • Portland, Oregon 97232 • 503-927-4409
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