// I'm back, bitches!

It has been a wild two years. One in which I made very little work and engaged with photography almost only through my teaching. But I’m back bitches!

Shortly before my last post over two years ago, my mom’s cancer came back. I also discovered I was pregnant, only to lose the baby around week 13. I entered a period of deep depression, started therapy, started medication, and slowly dragged myself back to life. It has taken another year to start feeling active and creative again.

Most recently, I’ve started to directly engage with my mom’s cancer by collaborating with her to create a series of images that examine her life through the lens of her pancreatic cancer. She’s always been interested in writing and journaling about her life, and I, of course, like to take photographs.

So far, the work has been well received, with several initial images being accepted into a couple of exhibitions. Subsequently, the work was awarded First Place in the exhibition Parallax: A Women’s Photography Exhibition at the Gormley Gallery of Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore, MD, as well as a Purchase Award from the University of North Dakota for the exhibition Visions in Photography: Stories of Now at the Myers Gallery. The work as a whole also received an Honorable Mention for the Lucie Foundation’s fine art scholarship. Both my mother and I are honored to share the work with others.

That’s it for now - but I’ll leave you with this: FUCK CANCER.

I felt like a five year old. 2022. Received the Purchase Award from The University of North Dakota.

// Shelter in Place: Days 11-20

The routine of taking these images every day gives me something to look forward to doing - something that motivates me to continue paying attention. This pandemic is scary - for damn sure - and wholly inconvenient at a minimum. We do not have too many cases here in Marquette, but a lot of cases and most of the deaths locally are coming out of one of our nursing homes. Tragedy heightened by the fact that they are alone and cannot be visited by their family. I have been thinking a lot about connection and how to stay connected to my family living in Minnesota (and Tennessee) during this time. Video chat has helped a lot, but damn I wish I could give my mom a hug. Stay safe, and stay home - protect your loved ones and other people’s loved ones that are particularly at risk during this time.

// Shelter in Place: The First Ten Days

As with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned my world and daily routines upside down. When Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer enacted a “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order on March 24, I knew I would need a way to mark the days as they passed and to find a way to stay active and creative, so I have turned to documenting daily observations made in the now small sphere of my neighborhood and home. Here are my observations from the first 10 days of Shelter in Place.

// In the Woods at The Gallery, Feb-March 2020

At the beginning of February, I installed several of the birch bark cyanotype pieces from my series In the Woods at The Gallery on Washington Street in Marquette for the exhibition Birch and Stone curated by Christine Saari. The work was paired with sculptures made of stone and wood made by Pasqua Warstler. The work was up until March 21, with a reception for the work on February 7th.

// Midwest Midwinter at MCAD

midwest-midwinter-poster

The image “Mother’s Sewing Room” from Forever A Wilderness will be at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design as a part of “Midwest Midwinter,” an exhibition of selected midwestern undergraduate photography professors’ works. Thanks to MCAD’s MFA Director Ellen Mueller for organizing and putting together a great opportunity to get to know the work of my colleagues from other schools. I love living in the Upper Peninsula and my job at NMU, but it is hard living in such a remote place in respect to networking opportunities and staying connected to other photography educators. I have been able to spend some time looking through everyone’s portfolio websites and it is great to see what my colleagues are making.

Reception on February 5, 2020 at 6:00pm.

Participating Artists:
Abbey Hepner, Allen Morris, Areca Roe, Ashley Rachelle Feagin, Barbara Diener, Catherine J. Davis, Christine Lenzen, Dana Fritz, Elisabeth Hogeman, Elise Kirk, Elizabeth M. Claffey, Emily Najera, Glenna Jennings, Jason Reblando, Jennifer Kettler, Joseph Mougel, Julie Rae Powers, Lex Thompson, Lorena Molina, Meghan Kirkwood, Melissa Borman, Nate Mathews, Noritaka Minami, Peter Happel Christian, Priscilla Briggs, Sasha Phyars-Burgess, Tianqiutao Chen, Erika Ritzel