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| Rhona Shand Originally exhibited in the John R. Grady Gallery of Photographic Art, Elgin Community College Rhona Shand’s artwork utilizes the digital medium to create a hybrid of photographic representation with impressionistic technique. The work speaks to the fragility of the human condition, exploring ideas of self-image, phobias, conflict, anxiety, confinement, relationships, and escape. Each image is intricately layered with photographic, textured, and drawn elements, with each piece containing up to ten different layers. The layering of images and texture in the pieces functions as a visual metaphor for experience, and inside each piece it is almost as if time has collapsed with impressions, sensations, and emotions flooding in all at once.
The Yellow Wallpaper suggests a reference to the 1892 literary piece of the same name by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore. The story records a woman’s descent into madness as a result of patriarchal societal restrictions, and is laced with a deeply felt subtext of the protagonist’s need for liberation and independence through imaginative transformation. Shand’s visual character resonates with these themes while metamorphosing from the intangible into reality.
Untitled (Transplant) suggests escape or the desire to escape, with a shadowed figure reaching past a caged window. Tentacles of weeds snake toward the figure, as if to restrain or impede its movement. The figure is marred by scratches, the wounds perhaps the driving impetus for flight, and we are left to wonder if the escape is ultimately successful or defeated. - Nate Larson |
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