Liz Doles’s Profile
Liz Doles’s Profile
- Lankavaa lassanai
- 9Dec2011
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- Sri Lanka is lovely. . . I'm in this country to create a portfolio of pinhole imagery of Sri Lanka's architectural heritage, but I can't stay off the streets. Once, in a grandiose moment, I thought that I'd like to photograph the face of humanity.It may not be possible for any idividual to do that, but Sri Lanka, with its centuries of cultural collision, is at least an ideal place to try. Place is not so much about atmosphere as it is about the people who breathe the air. Please check back...
- Portfolio
- 30Oct2010
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- HOLGA SKETCHBOOK
- 19Jul2010
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- Nepal Diary
- 24Jun2010
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- Grey
- 22Jun2010
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- An Ainu Enclave
- 19Jun2010
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As an artist I've always longed to capture the numinous as it is manifest in our daily reality; to make that mark that sums up the enormity of our existence, to author images equal to the intensity of being alive. Twenty years ago, this pursuit was derailed by a diagnosis of acute ophthalmic thyroid disease—Graves’ Disease. My color perception was diminished. Doctors thought I might go blind. My compromised sight made many of my art practices problematic, including my day job as a freelance designer. I needed a solution.
A laundry detergent box, spray painted matte black, then fitted with a patch of aluminum can pricked with a pin, sanded and filed to produce a negative with even focus, became a pinhole camera. It provided the serendipitous solution to my dilemma and changed my artistic practice. I don’t need to read little numbers in panels or on dials. I don’t struggle looking through a viewfinder or squint at a screen. I judge exposure by time of day, longitude and season, relying here too on serendipity and a bit of unseen assistance.
Now beat up and patched up, this pinhole camera has become the vehicle of my artistic ambition. It has become the ideal tool to record my vision of this physical world wherein we are enveloped by the divine, but rendered numb by familiarity and routine, girded against the word that is unspeakable so that we can go on paying bills, fretting over the inconsequential. Without a lens to collect light or organize depth of field, pinhole photographs have a quality of light that is neither noon or night washing over an evenly focused picture plane, making images that are of this world and yet exist in some other time and place. Without the distraction of a viewfinder or LCD panel, composing is instinctive, allowing the subconscious to enter unhindered in the creative process.
Liz Doles 21 Valentine St #6 Cambridge MA 02139 USA www.lizdoles.com
Exhibitions
April 2012 Lankavaa Lassanai a portfolio of portraits The American Center Colombo Sri Lanka
June 2011 Shift John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, group show Washington DC
March 2011 The Armory Show VSA Pier 92
January-March 2011 Without a Lens: pinhole photography Open Door Gallery solo exhibit, Boston
October 2010 Impressions of Boston Boston City Hall group show, Boston
June-September 2010 Revealing Culture Smithsonian International Gallery, Washington D C
June 2009, 2010 Wish You Were Here 8, 9 A I R Gallery group exhibition, Brooklyn N Y
May 2010 84th International Competition: Photography! The Print Center, Philadelphia
January 2008 Liz Doles Drawings Eclipse Gallery solo exhibit, Boston
April 2007 Broad Hokkaido Harbor Gallery pinhole imagery of Ainu Culture, Boston
January 2005 Incomplete Harbor Gallery solo show painting, Boston
Awards Residencies Collections
2011 – 2012 Fulbright grant for photography in Sri Lanka
2011 Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant
2010 Haven Foundation Grant
2009 Artists’ Fellowship NYC grant for artists
2010, 2009 Redgate Studios Resident Beijing China
2010, 2008 The Vermont Studio Center resident Johnson Vermont
University of Massachusetts Boston permanent collection Boston Massachusetts
The Zimmerli Art Museum permanent collection Rutgers University New Brunswick New Jersey
Education
University of Massachusetts Boston graduate summa cum laude BA in Art History and Japanese Culture
Massachusetts College of Art classes in Photography and Art History and Art Education
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston diploma in Fine Art
Stats:
- Albums Published:
- 7
- Tags:
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- Number of Connections:
- 15
