ARTIST STATEMENT

Statement: Time Spent That Might Other Wise Be Forgotten

I am interested in the failures of photography in preserving experience and personal history as well as the means by which photographs transform history into nostalgic objects that obscure understandings of the past.

 

In series Time Spent That Might Otherwise Be Forgotten, cross stitch embroidery has been sewn directly into family photographs. The images are broken down and reformed through the embroidery into a hand-sewn pixel structure. As areas of the image are concealed by the embroidery, small, seemingly trivial details emerge while the larger picture and context are erased. I am interested in the disjunct between actual experience and photographic representation and photography’s ability to supplant memory. By borrowing the visual language of digital imaging with an analog process, a connection is made between forgetting and digital file corruption. The tactility of the pieces also references the growing trend of photos remaining primarily digital- stored on cell phones and hard drives, but rarely printed out into a tangible object.

 

 

Statement: Berlin

These embroidered images are from a series of photographs taken along the entire circumference of the former Berlin Wall. Sections of the photographs have been obscured by cross-stitch embroidery sewn directly into the photograph forming a pixelated version of the underlying image. My retracing of the Wall perimeter took me through the city center as well as the suburbs and outlying forests. I was particularly interested in photographing locations where no

visible traces of the actual wall remain, but in which there are subtle

clues of its previous existence. These clues include incongruities in the

architecture that occurred as new structures were built on newly opened

land parcels, changes in street lights or newer vegetation. In addition to

the physical aspects that point to the former division of the city, I am

interested in the psychological weight of these sites. In many of the

images, the embroidered sections of the photograph represent the exact

scale and location of the former Wall offering a pixelated view of what

lies behind. In this way, the embroidery becomes a trace in the landscape

of something that no longer exists, but is a weight on history and

memory

 

BIOGRAPHY

Diane Meyer received a BFA in Photography from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts in 1999 and an MFA in Visual Arts from The University of California, San Diego in 2002. She has been living in Los Angeles since 2005 where she is a Professor of Photography at Loyola Marymount University.

 

She has received grants from METRO Los Angeles, The City of Santa Monica Department of Cultural Affairs, The California Council for the Humanities California Stories Fund and the Durfee Foundation. She has been an artist in residence at Takt, Berlin; 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica; CUE Art Foundation, New York; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Residency in the Woolworth Building.

 

Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA; Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh; the 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica; AIR Gallery, NYC; The Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City;  SPARC, South Pasadena; and Granary Art Center, Utah.

 

Her work as been included in numerous group shows in the United States and abroad including the Robert Mann Gallery, NYC; Regina Anzenberger Gallery, Vienna, Austria; Klompching Gallery, NYC; The Brattleboro Museum of Art, VT; ABC Treehouse, Amsterdam; Fototropia, Guatemala City; Schneider Gallery, Chicago; Field Projects, NYC; Photoville, Brooklyn; Athens Photo Festival, Greece; China House, Penang, Malaysia; Galerie Huit, Arles, France; Project 42, Alkmaar, The Netherlands;  The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY; The Helsinki Biennale, Finland; Sweeney Art Gallery, Riverside; CUE Art Foundation, NYC; NEXT Art Fair, Chicago; Field Projects, New York;  Redux Contemporary Art Center, Charleston; The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins; The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids; The Seaport Cultural Center, NYC; Cuchifritos Gallery, NYC; Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, NYC; Lennox Contemporary, Toronto; Rotunda Gallery, NYC; Jen Bekman Gallery, NYC; Spaces Gallery, Cleveland; Jessica Murray Projects, NYC; Arthouse, Austin; and the Holter Museum of Art, Helena.