May Issue 2002
Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte, NC, Offers Works by Martha Strawn
Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte, NC, continues its series of solo photography exhibitions in the Photography Room with Martha Strawn's New Works. The exhibition will be on view through May 31, 2002.
The photographs in this show are new images from journeys Strawn made during the past several years to India, her sixth stay, and Egypt in 1999, the Yukon in 2000, and since in North Carolina and Florida. Her work conveys a sense of place portrayed through images about nature and culture. Strawn's photographs are testaments to her passion for interdisciplinary understanding expressed through visual form.
As one of the world's oldest civilizations, India as long provided the photographer with an inspiration for communicating a powerful sense of place and a strong spiritual connection to the land within that culture. Several of the photographs depict Indian rice flower drawings or "threshold" diagrams, which are links between the mysteries of the past and present as they transform the secular threshold into a sacred one. Each day the drawings must be re-created in a daily ritual practice performed by women.
Strawn is best known for her photographs and writings concerning anthropological and environmental subjects. The spiritual sense is what interests Strawn as she deals with environmental and development issues here in the United States and in particular in the swamps of her native Florida. Her book, "Alligators: Prehistoric Presence in the American Landscape", Johns Hopkins Press, 1997, uses 151 photographs from the more than 40,000 images taken over a ten year period while working from Texas to North Carolina to visually portray a nature and culture approach to biotic system preservation. Strawn is an advocate for deep ecology, using visual ecology, a term she defined in her book, to communicate a sense of environmental subjects.
Martha Strawn developed the Time Arts area (photography, video and photo-digital arts) at UNC-Chapel Hill where she has taught since 1971. In 2001, she received the First Citizens Scholars Medal, the highest research honor bestowed at UNC-C, for her work in the arts as well as, a NEA, two NC Artists Grants, and a Fulbright Senior Fellowship. She was the initiating founding member of The Light Factory where she remains active as an Advisory Board member. Strawn received her MFA from Ohio University and her BA from Florida State University with additional studies in Japan with FSU and at Brooks Institute of Photography in California. Her numerous solo and group exhibitions over the years, include shows at the Mint Museum of Art, The Light Factory, University of Florida, Wadsworth Athenaeum in Connecticut, University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) in New Delhi. Her work is in the collections of the IGNCA, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Princeton University Art Museum in addition to other private and public collections. Strawn's photographs are published in many books and essays; most notable Alligators: Prehistoric Presence in the American Landscape, and Across the Threshold of India which is currently in publication.
For more information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at 704-334-3799 or at (www.hodgestaylor.com).
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