abstract
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Many familiar domestic objects (dish detergent bottles, buttons, or squirt-guns, for example) are formally loaded with visual meanings and subtext even if not intentionally designed or immediately obvious. This research proposes the use of experimental photographic imagery overlaid with screen-printed visual information to encourage previously unseen readings from seemingly ordinary household items. The “photogram” represents the earliest type of photographic imagery and offers a luminous, silhouetted image revealing physical-material qualities of an object. Screen-printing (both text and image) directly onto these original pieces, will amplify and reintegrate questions concerning domesticity and “women’s work”, cleanliness, nostalgia, plastics, and consumerism. A seed grant would enable me to digitally document my existing and new photographic works which become the basis for the production of large-scale visually hybrid “print/photo” fine art pieces. The resulting works would celebrate normally overlooked aspects of domestic environment and also the challenge viewers to “see the familiar in a new light”.
Works from this research are scheduled for exhibition at the Museum of Clean in Pocatello, ID in October/November 2018. I have been selected for inclusion and will contribute work to the Artist Printmaker/Photographer Research Collection (AP/PRC) at Texas Tech University. I will also disseminate pieces from this research to multiple venues regionally, nationally, and internationally.