Thesis 2007

Andrea Horns, Scotia Mackay, Larry Ockene, and Ellen Witebsky

On view: June 8 – July 10, 2007

Photographic Center Northwest presents thesis work by four students from the Certificate Program. These graduating thesis students each posses a style that is uniquely their own, but they share a passion for fine art photography that has led them through years of in-depth study as part of PCNW’s rigorous Certificate Program. Please join us in recognizing their accomplishment with an exhibition featuring their work in a variety of formats and addressing themes as individual as the artists themselves.

In My Sensational Skin, Andrea Horns portrays the beauty and diversity of the most amazing of our organs: the skin. Intrigued by the tender wrapping of her own children, and inspired by Kent Stevenson’s song, she explored the ever changing appearance of skin — used every day, durable enough to last, but fragile at the same time. The color photographs in this series show grace and beauty at any age.

In Boundaries, Scotia MacKay illustrates with images and poetry, the cause and effect of various forms of separation; light and dark, vulnerability and protection, support and deformity, discipline and spaciousness. This exhibit is in the form of an installation and includes the artist’s voice—reciting her poems creating an atmosphere that is soothing and mysterious.

Larry Ockene presents us with a view of the extraordinary within the ordinary, in Peregrine Forms. Through extreme macro photography, plant life becomes highly abstract – evoking landscapes, anatomical structures, and alien worlds: In the interior of a red pepper is an embryo in a womb; in the draped curves of a vine flower is the caldera of a volcano.  The artist’s large color images invite one to look deeply at the intriguing forms in everyday life.

Home is not just a place.  It is a personal space where the objects with which we surround ourselves evoke powerful feelings.  In Ellen Witebsky’s Poems from Home, these household objects – sometimes worn and dirty, sometimes bright and glittery – become the subjects of elegant still lifes.  In these color photographs, she captures the beauty and warmth of everyday things.