UMBRA

"UMBRA: Works By Julie Renee Jones" opened Saturday February 11th.

From the artist:

As we age our idea of home shifts and changes. Once the comfort and familiarity of home is left behind, a conflicting memory of a mythic and foreign environment surfaces. In the series UMBRA I struggle with this notion of the familiar and banal, transforming memory into a world of fantasy and unease. I work with my family members and personal experiences to deconstruct what my home was and reconstruct what it has become: a shadow world where the past and present exist in the same space as the real and imagined.

In this process, a parallel yet fictionalized world is created, referencing not only the tenuous relationship between memory and photography but also the specific experience of growing up in the suburban American Midwest during the 80s and 90s. Using the visual vernacular of family picture-making with elements of extreme light, shadow, and color, I create a tangible portrayal of fading memory concurrent with the visceral reality of the moment. I am interested in not only exploring the construction of familial mythos, but also the romanticism and contentious psychological experience of growing up living the supposed “American Dream.”

UMBRA ran from February 11th-28th.