A Change in State

A Change in State
New works by Michelle Westmark Wingard

Physically On View: September 15 - October 9, 2022
Virtually On View: Instagram @bethelgalleries
In-person Artist Talk: Thursday, September 15, at 6pm in the Eastlund Room (CLC Building, Level 2). Reception in the Olson Gallery following the talk.

What are you leaving behind and what are you bringing with you? Similar to the way UV light fundamentally changes the compositional state of cyanotype emulsion - transforming it permanently to its Prussian blue color - Wingard's new cyanotype prints, participatory postcards, and video work explores the ways in which the pandemic has also changed our way of being. 

We have been navigating historically significant times of amassed real and ambiguous losses. Even as pandemic restrictions lift, we are living within a new normal. Wingard's practice embraces the immediacy of what it means to make work from within an experience, her cyanotypes use meticulously repetitive lines exploring perceptions of control and relinquishing control. Wingard's work uses the horizon line as a metaphor for the intangible, layered histories, and varying perspectives as a way of responding to the anxiety of now.

About the Artist
Michelle Westmark Wingard is an installation-based photographer, curator, and arts educator. She is Professor of Art and Gallery Director of Bethel University’s two exhibition spaces. Her photographic and curatorial projects often seek to create experiential and participatory opportunities exploring themes of memory, grief, memorial, perception, and interconnection. She has curated several exhibitions and has also exhibited her own photographic work locally and nationally. She served as a Curatorial Mentor for Emerging Curators Institute (2019-22). She is the recipient of the Jerome Travel Grant (2015) and the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant (2017 and 2019). Westmark Wingard holds an MFA in photography from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York (2006). She lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Image: Postcards to the Future, cyanotype on rag paper reproduced as postcards, 2022