Patty Carroll
AiR Workshop
February 2 through 11, 2005
Made possible by the Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts
SquigglyThe job of an artist is to access these “essential” images and recreate or reconfigure them in some way, perhaps into something completely new or unexpected.
In this workshop, we will photograph or use photographs that the participants have taken to create a new narrative from the imagery. The narratives may be fictional, real, or some combination. The resultant form will be dictated by the story. It might be a book form of some sort that unfolds the narrative, a series of photographs that work as a unit, an installation of images and objects, a set of postcards, or any appropriate output.
Each participant must have an idea from which to begin, which we will discuss. From there, I would like each of us to photograph the “missing pieces” that are needed for their narrative. That may take people back home, out into the country, into thrift stores, digging in their mothers’ attic, or wherever! Back in the studio, we will then let the stories unfold and begin the process of weaving ideas into imagery for output.
Patty Carroll
Artists' Biography
Since leaving graduate school in 1972 at the Institute of Design, IIT in Chicago, where I studied photography with Aaron Siskind, Arthur Siegel, and Garry Winogrand, I have taught photography at the university level. My BFA is in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (1968,) where I began to learn photography from Art Sinsabaugh. In 1973, I began teaching at a small American art school, The Aegean School of Fine Arts in Paros, Greece, then taught photography full-time at Penn State University in 1973-74, the University of Michigan in 1974-76, and at the Institute of Design from 1977-1992. When we moved to England, I taught photography as Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art in London and as Tutor at London College of Printing from 1992-96. I continue to teach part-time; in 1996 at SACI in Florence, Italy, and in 1997 taught at Cranbrook Academy for a short time. Currently, I am teaching photography and digital photography part-time at Columbia College and at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
I have participated in many one-person and group exhibitions consistently since 1971, generally in traditional photographic exhibit spaces. Recent exhibitions include my work of Elvis impersonators in the large group exhibition entitled, “Elvis and Marilyn: 2 X Immortal,” which featured artists who use the imagery of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe in their work. It opened at the ICA in Boston in 1994, and travelled throughout the USA, and then to Japan until 1998. One-person exhibitions of my work of Elvis Impersonators have been at Memphis College of Art in 1997, and in 1999, “Elvis?” at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. My exhibition titled, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” of night photographs and was held at the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, England in April, 1996. This work has been shown in numerous gallery exhibitions, recently in 1999 at Carol Ehlers Gallery in Chicago with my one-person exhibit, “Longings in the Night.” My photographic portrait series “Spirited Visions,” was a collaborative project with Chicago artists, where I photographed them as if they were in their own paintings or sculpture. The exhibition and book included examples of the work of 42 Chicago artists paired with my portrait of them, and a short text by James Yood. The exhibition opened at the State of Illinois Gallery in Chicago in 1991 and travelled throughout Illinois for two years, sponsored by the Illinois Arts Council. This work was published as a book by the University of Illinois Press with the same name.
I have curated several exhibitions of photography, most importantly a large exhibition and catalogue of American still life photography titled, American Made: The New Still Life. The project was sponsored by JACA (Japan Art and Culture Association,) and was shown in several museums in Japan in 1993. In1998, I curated a photography exhibition for the Contemporary Art Council in Chicago about constructed identities, which was shown at TBA Space. The exhibition was titled “The Constructed Self; Who Do You Think You Are?” A catalogue accompanied the exhibition on the theme of alternative identities. I curated an exhibition of Elvis related folk art, titled “E2K: Elvisions 2000” for Intuit, the Center for Outsider and Intuitive Art in Chicago, which opened in January, 2000.
Museums that own my work include the Art Institute of Chicago, the MCA, MOCP and MOMA. I have been the recipient of small grants such as faculty enrichment, and Illinois Arts Council grants. In October, 1998, I was selected as one of the four American Associate Artists by the Atlantic Center for the Arts, to be in residence at the Akiyoshidai Arts Village in Yamaguchi, Japan. In September, 1999, I was granted an Artist in Residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, in Snowmass, Colorado to make a computer generated artist postcard book, titled
Tales of Desperation and Wander. In the spring of 2002, I photographed and collaborated with Victor Margolin on a project of his collection of souvenir memoribilia. The resulting book is entitled, Culture is Everywhere, and was released in September, 2002 published by Prestel. In 2003, I received an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Illinois Arts Council for work incorporating my night pictures into my "Faux Film Posters." In 2004, these digital "Faux Film Posters" were shown at the Art Institute of Chicago in a one person exhibition titled "Dark and Deadly."
Patty Carroll's website
