Images by Joanne Koltnow — Looking at Light Through Flowers

Artist Reception: Friday, September 19, 4:30-6:00pm

Artist's Statement: "I've been making art since I was a child, working in various media but always coming back to photography. I love the opportunity it gives me to distill a moment in time.

For about 20 years I photographed people and made dark, often mysterious, images. Five years ago, wanting to digitize some negatives my father had made in the 1930s, I bought a flatbed scanner. And then one day I put a flower on the glass. The resulting image—magnified and transparent—took my breath away. It also changed the direction of my photography.

The flowers I now make—with their floating, watercolor-like effect—remind me of early French botanical drawings. When I add containers to the objects on the scanner, the image is unpredictably transformed.

Last year I started combining the scanned prints with monotype and chine collé (a form of collage). And currently, with the Bottles series, I'm examining what happens when the container completely encloses the plant. This may, in fact, be a way back to mysterious images.

My work is in private collections in the US and abroad. I'm represented by Modernbook Gallery in Palo Alto and Wall Space in Seattle."

You can contact info@modernbook.com , or, 650-327-6325, if you are interested in a purchase.

You can view her art on her website at www.joannekoltnow.com.