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Vanessa Marsh

(Seattle, Washington, 1978 - )


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Biography

Lives and works in Oakland, CA. Represented by Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Foley Gallery, New York, NY, and Julie Nester Gallery, Park City, Utah

Vanessa Marsh explores the shifting nature of memory and perception in imagined photographic nocturnal landscapes. A longtime practitioner of staged photography, Marsh produces what she calls “relatable false realities”—pictures composed entirely from memory and completely fabricated by hand.  Rather than use a camera to record a scene, Marsh creates photograms developed from a complex process involving a high degree of experimentation and risk. While most photograms are made by placing objects directly onto light-sensitive paper and exposing it to light, Marsh’s work is comprised of several layers of drawings on acetate, cut-paper silhouettes, reverse-color painting on Mylar, collage, and a series of darkroom techniques.

In Mountains 10, Marsh set the shadowy outline of a mountain range against an expansive midnight sky, punctuating it with individual stars that coalesce into the diffuse, brilliantly colored halos and contrails of the Milky Way. Linking the light of the galaxy with ancient ways of navigating the world via the stars, Marsh merges human time with the sublime aspects of the cosmic imagination. Whether the mountains mask the glow of the sun or the light from a nearby city is unclear, adding to the mystery and aura of the image.

This would be the first work by Marsh to enter into the collection.

Biography
Born in 1978 in Seattle, Vanessa Marsh received her BFA from Western Washington University, Bellingham in 2001 and MFA from California College of the Arts in 2004. She has received fellowships from Headlands Center for the Arts (2004), McDowell Colony (2007), and Kala Art Institute (2011), and was artist in residence at Rayko Photo Center (2014). In 2015, she received a public art commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission for Terminal 3 at San Francisco International Airport. Her work has been shown throughout the United States and was included in the exhibition It’s a Small World (2007) at the San José Museum of Art. Her work is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Marsh lives and works in Oakland, California. (acquisitions meeting September 11, 2017)


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