Colleen Fitzgerald: Attachment Lessons

/ATTACHMENT LESSONS

Colleen Fitzgerald

Material Needs 2024

September 5 - October 20, 2024

 

materials funded: photo papers, transparent paper, ink

Reflecting on our family histories helps us understand how we perceive both our present and our future. In Attachment Lessons, Colleen Fitzgerald reimagines the documents, objects, and images in her personal and family archives. Through photographic weaving, layering, collage, and other artistic interventions, these works offer an alternative way to visually perceive the concept of self and family.

Fitzgerald is curious how family archives (photographs, report cards, albums, vintage objects, and more) can be reimagined to more accurately reflect lived experiences and memories. While using the universally recognizable materials from her family archives, she constructs each piece with a unique process influenced by its personal meaning and subject matter. For example, Family Photo Album Covers uses a complex weaving of three pigment prints of her family’s photo album covers. The physical process of creating the piece mimics the hands-on process of crafting a complex album, and highlights the physical nature of prints contained in such family photo albums. The three-dimensional illusion of the triaxial weave emphasizes the three-dimensional nature of physical family photo albums as objects from older eras in contrast to modern digital collections.

The salon-style installation of these works, combined with the unique wallpaper, evokes the concept of home and encourages viewers to explore and reflect on their own complex and layered histories.

/ABOUT THE ARTIST

Colleen Fitzgerald

Colleen Fitzgerald is a visual artist, photo advocate, educator, and consultant. Her work creates new approaches to conventional subjects in art by utilizing the materials and tools of photography in non-traditional ways. She is the recipient of grants and awards, including ArtsWorcester’s Marlene and David Persky Present Tense Prize. She was selected as an Artist in Residence at the Vermont Studio Center, Noble and Greenough School, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. The Filter Photo Festival, Pingyao Photography Festival, Photographic Center Northwest, and more have featured her work. She enjoys curating exhibitions to champion the work of fellow artists.

Fitzgerald earned an MFA from Parsons School of Design and a BA from Boston College. She has also studied at La Scuola Lorenzo de’ Medici and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In addition to serving as a faculty member at universities across the United States, she has designed and implemented curricula for photography courses in Italy, Spain, and England.

@colleen.fitz // www.colleenfitzgeraldstudio.com

/EXHIBITED WORKS

Family Photo Album Covers

woven pigment prints

12″ x 16″

2023




memory of a memory of a photo of my favorite family vacation

acrylic and pigment print

5″ x 7″

2024




Meaning of Marks

pigment prints and transparency

11″ x 14″

2024




side slipping

wallpaper and framed pigment print

24 x 30 inch wallpaper and 3.75 x 3.75 inch pigment print

2024




Faded, Restored, and Backside (Version 1)

pigment print

8″ x 10″

2024




and to hold

cyanotype

8″ x 10″

2024




Matresence

pigment print and thread

8″ x 8″

2024




hidden histories

pigment print

8″ x 10″

2024




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