Krista Svalbonas
In the Presence of Memory 8, 2014
Steel photo-serigraph and mixed media on industrial felt
15 x 9"

Artist Statement
I grew up in an area of Pennsylvania dominated by the steel industry, and have long been interested in industrial architecture as an expression of cultural history. "In the Presence of Memory" explores the architectural vestiges of a far more ancient industry: agriculture. The disappearing vernacular architecture of barns in rural Pennsylvania reveals their varied European lineages: specific structural elements reflect the building traditions of the home countries of the immigrant families who built them. A typology of these barn structures bears witness to centuries of migration. But what once seemed a stable and permanent destination is now in flux, as the family farm gives way to industrial farming, and farmland is converted to residential or commercial developments. For the past year I have been traveling throughout my home state to document these agricultural structures: abandoned, re-purposed, or - occasionally - still in use. These photographic images have become the source material for this body of work. Using industrial felt (manufactured in Pennsylvania) as a substrate, I silk-screen images of architectural details of the barns using industrial pigments such as steel, iron and copper. I paint each piece individually using oil and cold wax, and cut into the felt, echoing the empty and thatched spaces of the often-dilapidated structures I have photographed. I "patch" these cut areas with colored sections of serigraph negatives, mimicking the splashes of incongruous color on the weathered surfaces that have been repaired again and again. The colors, forms and shapes of the felt panels all refer to the original structures; even in their abstraction, these paintings document the vanishing rural industrial landscape.

Artist Bio
Krista Svalbonas holds a BFA in Photography and an MFA in Interdisciplinary studies. Her work has been shown in a number of exhibitions including: the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Spartanburg Art Museum in South Carolina, Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, Marshall Gallery in Los Angeles, Klompching Gallery and ISE Cultural Foundation in New York. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Cesis Art Museum in Latvia, the Gregg Museum of Art and Design in North Carolina, the Woodmere Art Museum and Temple University in Philadelphia. Recent awards include a Center for Photographic Art Artist Grant (2022), Baumanis Creative Projects Grant (2020), Rhonda Wilson Award (2017), Puffin Foundation Grant (2016) and a Bemis Fellowship (2015) among others. In 2022/23 Svalbonas had solo exhibitions of her series Displacement, at the Copenhagen Photography festival in Denmark, the Tallinn city museum in Tallinn, Estonia, Museum of Textile and Industry in Augsburg Germany and the National Museum in Vilnius Lithuania. She is an associate professor of photography at St. Joseph's University. She lives and works in Philadelphia.

kristasvalbonas.com

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