WORKSHOP: FOUND FAMILIES
October 17 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm MDT
WORKSHOP
FOUND FAMILIES
Saturday, October 17th | 1:00pm – 4:00pm
$45
This collage workshop with Artist-in-Residence Eli Craven focuses on re-interpreting family image archives through alterations and combinations with additional found and made materials. We explore family photography and portraiture, the meanings they carry, and how we can transform them through these added materials. You may use additional materials such as thread, fabric, papers, documents, wood, mirrors, metals, etc. As we create collages and tell stories, we will also discuss the meaning behind the combinations of these materials and how images change over time.
You are encouraged to bring some of your own materials to work with: copies and test strips, in addition to originals of photographs intended to use in the workshop. A variety of found photographic images and various sources will also be available.
Partial scholarships available by request to info@surelsplace.org.
BIOGRAPHY
Although currently based in Indiana, Eli Craven was raised in Idaho. “Returning to Idaho for this project feels appropriate given the origins of my relationship to photography and a return to the subject matter of my childhood,” Eli says. In his childhood home, magazines and movies were censored, select films and TV shows were forbidden, sexuality and death were seldom discussed. The power images hold was discovered through scrutinizing forbidden magazine collections, daytime soap operas, and movies. The impetus of his practice resides in this desire to see, only to discover nothing shocking. Instead, seemingly mundane imagery is isolated and fragmented, presenting a narrative exploring the image’s role in processes of socialization.
Eli left Idaho with a BFA in photography from Boise State back in 2011. He went on to pursue an MFA in photography at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Currently an Associate Professor of Photography at Purdue University, his work has been widely exhibited and published. Most recently his work has been exhibited at Kant Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark; KlompChing Gallery in Brooklyn, New York; and at the Blue Sky, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts in Portland, Oregon.