Catherine Angel

Catherine Angel

January 2, 1997 - February 1, 1997

In my work I want to provoke, questions and connect. I want to elicit a response from myself and my viewer. My concerns as an artist spin outwards from the summation of all of my experiences; it is all that I know and I cannot escape that what I am. I question from this point of view.

I grew up and was trained in the modernist age but I do not see myself as a modernist. My beginnings are there and I certainly embrace the rich photographic history that I have learned and borrowed from: the use of formal issues to evoke emotions, creating beautiful objects to seduce the viewer into looking, and a technical mastery over my medium for control. But I feel compelled to expand upon this modernist mode of discourse. I embrace the pluralistic aspects of postmodernism, the questioning of universal truths through issues of gender, cultural and social status, and the breakdown of the traditional straight photograph through an interdisciplinary approach.

During the past two years I have been exploring the use of text with images. In my most recent solo exhibitions I have interdispersed laser printed text on small panels (8”x10”) with the photographic/collage images. My imagery has always come out of my life’s history and so when I became interested in using text I went again to my experiences. The text basically came from four sources: 1) personal journal entries, 2) my medical records, 3) Webster’s Dictionary and 4) medical periodicals. With this work I was attempting to set up a discourse between the photographs collaged one upon another and between the two types of text (personal vs factual and cultural).