Poignant Portfolio no. 35: Sally Chapman
From the Editor
Hello readers, I’m pleased to share our first poignant portfolio from work seen at the 2021 Click! Portfolio Reviews. I’ve been fortunate to review work for Click! over the past 4 years both in person and now online, which as you can guess is a hard task when looking at work that really resonates the best in tangible form. From my experience, Click! has drawn in some of my favorite styles of photography (and photographers for that matter). Meaning, I’ve seen a lot of great hand-crafted process work over the years and these lovely mixed media cyanotypes by Sally Chapman are no exception.
Let’s not talk about the process though, Chapman covers that below, but I will say this, I dig it. I’m a romantic, at the very least when it comes to art. Easily taken with pretty pictures. But it is more than just that, Chapman’s recontextualizing of monuments/sculptures into new environments nods to the reclamation of the land by nature. An apocalypse even. And Chapman’s color use and frame spillover are beautifully designed.
Spend some time with these and take in the details, you won’t regret it. Thanks, Sally for sharing your work with us!
–Blue Mitchell @onetwelveprojects
In Mythic Nature I create compositions of an imagined world. I am fascinated by statuary in private and public spaces. These monuments have been erected to embody the mythos, ideals, and spiritual aspirations of the community. They are tributes to the sacrifice of local heroes, ancient gods, or religious icons and form the basis of my imagery. I digitally remove the statues from their stark plinths and merge them with an envisioned landscape, ensconced in blankets of flowers from manicured formal gardens that contrast the hand-hewn surfaces of statues with the natural world. From these composited images, I create digital negatives which I use to print in the 19th-century cyanotype process. Drawn to this technique for its tactile quality, I further add my hand into the image by drawing with pastels. The vertical orientation is a nod to the Asian scroll format and accentuates the upward movement of the statuary and the flowering plants as they both reach for the light and our ideals.
–Sally Chapman
[clicking on a thumbnail will bring up a lightbox]
About the Artist
Sally Chapman is a photographer living in Lowell, MA. She earned a BFA in ceramics and photography from Michigan State University. For over twenty years she worked as a ceramic artist in Colorado showing widely. When she returned to photography 10 years ago, she explored many techniques and gravitated towards tactile methods of printing. In her current work, Mythic Nature, she integrates hand-drawn elements within 19th century photographic process of cyanotype.
She won the Excellence in Photography Award at the Rockport Art Association and Museum National Show. She has recently been featured in The Hand magazine and has had solo shows at the MIT Rotch Architectural Library, Cambridge, MA; Gallery 93, Brookline, MA; and The Sanctuary in Medford, MA. She has recently been included in group shows at the Griffin Museum, Winchester, MA; Image Flow Gallery, Mill Valley, CA; Soho Gallery, New York, NY; Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury, VT; and the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA.
She is a member of the Griffin Museum, the Photo Resource Center, and the Arts League of Lowell.