ARTIST STATEMENT
This series of textile photogram prints combine silhouette imagery and medicinal plants, with embroidered embellishments. These collaged pieces explore our unique place in the world through memory, storytelling, and psychology. This work plays with the many layers of our psyche and the tension found between the natural world and our modern existence. These photograms utilize a uniquely created silhouette iconography as a medium to examine folklore and ritual as building blocks to our contemporary selves. This work draws on historical references from research on mythological goddesses, to the current social practice of cosplay, dressing to express the internal dialog in the vernacular. The embroidered text elements act as a form of secret messaging, hidden in plain sight. One source of inspiration here is the tradition of coding sewn into garments and blankets by women to assist in war efforts. Photograms reference the history of photography, and the textiles reflect on the traditions of women’s relationship to fabric as a meaningful part of our human story, representing millennia of universal and culturally specific knowledge and relationships with the natural world, literally and poetically.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Pamela Chipman is a Portland, Oregon based multi-media artist. Using photography, print, films, fiber, video loops, and public installations, her work has focused on the struggles of women in our culture. She creates work that speaks to the history, strengths and struggles of those who identify as women in our culture. She received her BA in psychology from Marylhurst University, she studied photojournalism at Boston University and fine arts at UCLA. Chipman’s work has recently been featured in exhibits at The Pacific Northwest Drawers at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland OR; Archer Gallery, Vancouver WA; Imogen Gallery, Astoria, OR; Vashon Center for the Arts, in Vashon WA; and the Art at the Cave Gallery, Vancouver WA; where her photo-based installations Inner Voices and Threads debuted in 2019. Chipman’s photographs are in permanent collections at the Portland Museum of Art and The Portland Visual Chronicle. Her innovative video books, which utilize a creative approach to QR code technology, are held at the UCLA Library and the UC Santa Cruz Library. Her video work has been exhibited internationally in galleries, at film festivals, and on television. Jumptown, her multichannel video piece, is permanently installed on an exterior wall in Portland, Oregon. Additionally, she created and curates the PDX Red Wall Project, an exterior public exhibition space with monthly changing exhibits. She was a co-founder and curator of the Blue Gallery in Portland. She has received numerous grants through Oregon RACC grants.
© Pamela Chipman