Dianne Kornberg
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American, born 1945
Projects/Portfolios
Madonna Comix
Introduction
MADONNA COMIX is a series of 26 prints based on 11 poems by Celia Bland. I began collaborating with poets in 2008. This, along with my background in painting, has led me into a new and experimental visual terrain. The figurative imagery is based primarily on my negative archive and additional photographs that I made as needed. I retained and used many of the residual artifacts that result from working with software. Although the work is no longer recognizable as photography and my working process is much like painting, photographically derived imagery is central.
Celia's poems speak to our fears, the choices we make, the things we take on faith—to multiple experiences of being a woman. Some comment on the profound physical and emotional experiences of childbearing; others on the mystery of the Virgin birth and the Madonna as emblematic of innocence and faith. They are both reverent and secular. I bring these dialogues into the images by usurping phrases and words from the poems which I juxtapose with underlying, proto-feminist text taken from photographed "Little Lulu" comic book pages. This allows a down-to-earth, irreverent and abbreviated commentary to break through.
The Madonna is the source of a rich iconography that I reference in the images. The emergence of the contemporary female jihadist as a suicide bomber in “Madonna Bomb” takes the idea of faith to an extreme, puzzling and troubling place—killing oneself for a belief. Who is this woman combatant? How does a belief, a yielding to faith, compel self-annihilation?
The Lore Which Nature Brings
Introduction
In 'The Lore Which Nature Brings,' poet Elisabeth Frost and I contrast scientific and poetic ways of engaging birds' nests. We ask how do science and poetry represent oppositional ways of interpreting nests, and how might we bridge (or at least comment on) these representational modes? We contrast two tropes: specimen collection (engaging the nests as objects), and the highly subjective, sometimes sentimental, meditations and emotional projections that characterize much poetry about birds and their nests. On these fictional specimen pages the collected nests interact with an over-determined poetic subject.
Arachne
Introduction
Arachne, a series of five diptychs, is my first collaborative project with a poet. Elisabeth Frost and I decided to allude to the style and conventions of collection and preservation, which have occupied me for many years in my work, and which dovetailed with Elisabeth’s interests in specialized language in poetry. We chose to work with spider webs as specimens. I used photographed webs, hand-inked text, penciled notations, red-bordered labels, and a surface that ‘impersonates’ specimen paper with stains and imperfections. Likewise, Elisabeth's text reflects descriptive taxonomy that is part of a preserved specimen, including genus, species, measurements, and Latin terminology.
We explore text and image as integral to one another, creating multiple dialogues: between hand-writing as scientific notation and as poetic/lyric phrase; between hand-writing as trace (partially erased) and the web as visual/glyphic trace; and between scientific and lyric ways of understanding the phenomenon before us – including [in 0005], the myth of Arachne, whose acts of creation our work also honors.
Evidence of its Occurrence
Introduction
In the spring of 2003 I was invited to spend a month at the Whiteley Center residence for scholars and artists at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island, to photograph in the marine algae herbarium. In these pigment prints, the physicality of the ink on paper closely mimics the thinly pressed algae specimens, and the photographic prints take on attributes of graphic media such as watercolor or pastel.
India Tigers
Introduction
These butterflies and moths from India were preserved in folded, triangular paper wrappings. I photographed them so that the wrappings appear to extend out from the picture plane, as might the wing of the insect. All of the images in the series rotate on an axis around a shared central point, and a delicate sense of movement is suggested as the direction of the light changes from one piece to the next.
Inchoations
Introduction
In these small portraits of animal fetal specimens from Portland State University and Lewis & Clark College, I wanted to call attention to the exquisite way in which form evolves, and to the evolutionary history and life force that we share with other living beings. The colors are achieved by selective masking in conjunction with various combinations of toners and stains.
Jack in the Box
Introduction
The diagonal lighting in this series of eight images echoes the visual impression I had when I opened the door of a weathered shed in Canada's Northwest Territories and saw a shaft of sunlight transform the bleached skull of a horse. The title refers to the malevolent toy of that name, which provokes multiple responses: surprise, fright, laughter. Although all the images are composed using the horse skull and a piece of cloth inside a corrugated box, each suggests a unique character--a jester, a swamp creature, and so on--some more ambiguous than others.
Cartwheel Suite
Introduction
In Cartwheel Suite, a series of six 40 x 50" gelatin silver prints, I used the bones of a disarticulated calf. I stored the bones in a corrugated box that had contained large sheets of mat board. One evening, the light in my basement studio transformed the bones into a luminous figure, suggesting to me a "dance of death." I made alterations to the box and rearranged and re-photographed the bones until the "cartwheel" movement developed. The painted and delaminated box can be perceived in various ways (as stage curtains, coffin fabric, candy wrapper, and so on).
Together, the six images depict an acrobatic sequence in which the expressions of the figure are joyous and have a spirit of high good humor. The juxtaposition of the cartwheel and the skeletal materials suggests the Epicurean injunction to "seize the day."
Comparative Anatomy
Introduction
Comparative Anatomy seeks to re-create the experience of anticipation and revelation that I had when I first opened the boxes of specimens from Reed College. With the diptych form I was able to give equal weight to the cover of the box and to its contents. The layers of text--labels postmarks--on the candy, cigar, and scientific-supply storage containers provide historic and ironic contexts.
Grids
Introduction
I made a sequence of sixteen grids with cat bones that had been collected in the 1930's for anatomy study. The changing arrangement of the bones from one grid to the next is reflected in the various grid structures, which are made with string, thread, and nails. The work refers to navigation (finding one's way through the unknown), archaeology (discovering order in chaos), and text. There is movement--a building up, a breaking apart, a falling down--throughout the piece.
Bone Stories
Introduction
Bone Stories is a loosely knit group of images that I made over a period of several years, based on bones collected as study specimens. During a facility cleanup at Reed College, bones from courses taught in the 1930's and 40's were discovered stored in a janitor's closet. Opening the dusty and often mislabeled boxes was a highly charged experience. Like small burials, these specimens seemed imbued with meaning. My encounter with this material began my work with scientific study collections.
Prographica, Seattle, WA, United States
Madonna Comix, Kornberg & Bland, Intro by Luc Sante, William James & Co, Sherwood, 2013
India Tigers, Stafford, Wilhour, William James & Co, Sherwood, OR, 2010
Field Notes, Photographs by Dianne Kornberg, Terry Toedtemeier, The Art Gym, Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, Oregon, 2007
Artist Statement
For fifteen years the primary subjects of my black and white photography were biological specimens collected scientific study. In 2000 I began digital printmaking. Propelled by an initial collaboration for “The Poetic Dialogue Project,” I have been working with poets for the past five years to create image/text pieces. I find this cross-disciplinary collaboration a transformative process that is moving me into new conceptual and visual territory.
Process Statement
My work includes toned gelatin silver prints and archival pigment prints utilizing large format film. For recent work done in collaboration with poets I additionally use small format digital capture and Photoshop. I do my own analog and digital printing in limited editions. Statements specific to each body of work are available on my website.
Dianne Kornberg is an artist known for her work with biological specimens, and for her large-scale black and white gelatin silver prints. Although she was trained as a painter, her medium, for twenty-five years, has been photography. For fifteen years, the subjects of her work were laboratory specimens collected for scientific study. Most recently, she has been collaborating with poets.
Kornberg was raised in Richland, Washington. She received her BFA from the University of Washington and her MFA from Indiana University in Painting. She is a Professor Emerita at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, and resides in the San Juan Islands in Washington State.
Kornberg has exhibited her work throughout the United States and internationally in more than twenty solo exhibitions. Her work is represented in several important collections including those of the Henry Art Gallery, Houston Museum of Art, International Center for Photography, Princeton Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum. She has been featured in book publications including Contemporary Art in the Northwest, 100 Artists of the West Coast, and Selected Works of the Portland Art Museum.
A monograph of her work, Field Notes, Photographs by Dianne Kornberg, 1992-2007, with an essay by Terry Toedtemeier, past Curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum, was published by The Art Gym, Marylhurst University, in 2007. In 2009 a book of her India Tigers portfolio, with an essay by Clint Wilhour and an afterword by Kim Stafford, was published by William James & Co. MADONNA COMIX, a collaboration with poet, Celia Bland, will be published by William James & Co. in 2013. The introduction is by Luc Sante.
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