April 28, 2025
$1,900.00
Edition: 1/3
The common thread running through Dunham’s various disciplines is conceptual in its origin and often connected to her Friends’ education. At her core is a preoccupation with light, community, acceptance, dynamism of communication, balance and symbiotic relationships. She creates in a space which erases the defining lines between photography and painting and painting and sculpture forging a unique path without adhering to traditional classification.
Interested in Paul Rand and Milton Glaser, Dunham pursued graphic design and illustration at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY from 1976-1980. As a design student, she became more broadly influenced by the Bauhaus known for its approach to teaching and integrating craft, design and the fine arts. Residing near her hometown in New Jersey, she worked in the field of graphic design until 1996 when she launched Fine Art Flowers, a floral/event design business. She relocated to the Hamptons in 2004 where she continued floral design working for major event florists for a short time. One shop she worked in had an unused spacious greenhouse that she used as a painting studio on her time off. Deciding to spend more time pursuing a career in art, in 2005 she took a job as gallery assistant to Mark Borghi in Bridgehampton. Inspired by his vast inventory of modern artists, she continued painting in her Southampton home. While employed at the gallery, she also became a freelance curator for an art rent and lease firm. She sold her work, and that of an exclusive group of artists she championed, to collectors and designers. Concurrently, she rented artwork to the film and television industry for set decoration and to offices in New York and Philadelphia. She has returned to New Jersey and focuses on a practice of photo-based work that may or may not be defined as photography and may or may not be defined as print- making.
Dunham states, “My practice begins with the illustration of a concept which is informed by my experience as a graphic designer whereas a problem solver, I interpreted ideas into logos for corporate identity/branding. In terms of outside experiences in secondary education and museum study, influential artists (to name a few) are Hans Hoffman, Joseph Albers, Kenneth Noland, James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson, Dand Flavin, Robert Irwin, and Larry Bell. Although my works on paper are realized in print format, I view the pigment ink printing of “digital images” more parallel to painting or drawing than print making. In print making, typically pigment is transferred from a plate, stone or screen making an impression. Digital “pigment prints” are not made from an impression or transfer of pigment; the mechanics of print heads dispense the pigments creating an image with droplets of ink onto the chosen substrate. Compositions are made with keyboard commands and a mouse or stylus such as a painter using a brush or other implement, so I view the process to be more like painting than printmaking. The medium, however, does allow for editioning the work in numbers and variable sizes, making it a bit more accessible than a painting might be. The principles of conceptual thought, color theory and design, and the decisions one makes regarding composition and palette working in any medium remain essential acquired assets for an artist and such are unique to each artist; technology has only provided a new instrument and the knowledge and ability to use such in a compelling and exclusive manner is as personal and unique to one working in this space as it is for any artist working in any medium. In my digital work, I begin with images of my own or appropriated from video stills appropriated from the internet then manipulate digitally creating distance from the image’s origin. Additionally, I make images on the computer without photography as a starting point. When painting, I think like a sculptor handling materials and manipulating elements manually; my preference is to pour and slather in direct contact without brushes. I add and subtract materials such as wires, threads, textiles, concrete and polyurethane which in some cases moves my work into the space of fiber art. Paintings begin on canvas but transform into dimensional, sculptural works. The alchemy of wood fire and Raku firing methods whereby control gives way to chance interests me. Although my ceramics works concern three-dimensional form, the surface texture is equally important; the use of fire in the Raku and wood firing processes produces textures and marks that emulate process-based painting and drawing. As diverse as my work is, my interest in problem solving, concept and the process of making art remains consistent across disciplines.
About the Mono Eclipse series:
This series concerns the shift in identity as an artist’s agent in a supportive role focusing on my own studio practice; it was a direct response to the disengagement with an artist whom I championed and promoted for seven years. The eclipses represent the intensity of my energy illustrated in the backgrounds as a supportive yet unseen force. I seek a depth and poignant balance between mysterious atmospheric blur alluding to something in the background (self) and the punctuation of hard-edged definition of the circle in the foreground (eclipsing self). As my intentions vary, colors are juxtaposed to create a disruption and reflect moods ranging from solemnity to exhilaration.
I continue to explore the circular form and targets, diagrams, solar systems, eclipses, retinas, cells and the minutia of subatomic particles at the root of quantum mechanics may all come to mind as I produce artwork but my focus remains conceptually and geometrically fixated on the dynamics of relationships and coming to terms with the shift from a background to foreground position. Symbolically, the circle or sphere represents the notions of totality, wholeness, original perfection, the Self, eternity, timelessness, and all cyclic movement. Circles imply the idea of time cycles, the perpetual motion of everything that moves the planets’ journey around the sun, the sun itself, and the generalized rhythm of the infinite universe without beginning or end. The Mono Eclipse series is imbued with harmony and tension; circles block the background but subtle shadows or glowing auras on the periphery allude to something vital concealed in the dimensional space beyond.
1 in stock
