Art Ventures has partnered with Eclectic Kitchen in Fayetteville to present Looking Back, Moving Forward, a retrospective of Diana Michelle’s photographic practice over the past 17 years. The exhibition is a portfolio of black and white compositions that are emotionally driven and macabre in nature. “The artist’s tension, pain, and fear manifest in a landscape that is not bucolic, pretty, or green, but it is a landscape with which many of us are familiar, undoubtedly in the season of 2020-2021,” according to the gallery.
“The dirt and decay that attach itself to my subjects signify the darkness that surrounds us as humans,” Michelle says. “Once-loved and long-abandoned objects that become decrepit due to weather and time transform into something else entirely that I find to be very personal and strangely beautiful.”
This focused retrospective is the mark of a significant recalibration in Michelle’s visual parameters that will lead to more revelations, and become an important part of her professional oeuvre. We look forward to sharing her future explorations with color, and in documentary film-making.
About the Artist
Diana Michelle earned her degree in Fine Art with an emphasis in darkroom photography and a Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of Arkansas. She is the recipient of the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts 2009 Annual Bibba Pruet Scholarship. She used the scholarship to purchase a large format film camera and document the old Gypsy Camp for Girls in rural Northwest Arkansas. She teaches photography and Photoshop at Northwest Technical Institute as well as the Eureka Springs School of the Arts and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Her work exhibits at galleries and museums both locally and regionally and is a part of various private collections. She is represented in NWA by Art Ventures Gallery.
Looking Back, Moving Forward will be on display until March 28. Eclectic Kitchen is located at 1218 Garland Ave. Fayetteville, AR 72703.