Keliy Anderson-Staley, _Hand Gesture,_ 2022. Cyanotype wall installation. Image courtesy of the artist

Workshop and Artist Talk with Keliy Anderson-Staley

Saturday, April 22 | 2–5PM

Silver Street Studios at Sawyer Yards, East Gallery

2000 Edwards Street, Houston, TX 77007

Join Keliy Anderson-Staley for an artist talk and image-making workshop in conjunction with the exhibition Contact: Making Images Using the Cyanotype Process. Anderson-Staley will discuss her use of historical photographic processes to create photographic works that explore the relationships between portraiture, identity, and memory. At the center of Anderson-Staley’s practice is the exploration of the role that photographic-technology plays in the construction of personhood, agency, and identity. Her work is often presented in exhibitions in a salon-style hang with only the name of her sitter and date of exposure offered to the audience for context. The result is a collection of timeless images that resists classification in the context of identity politics.

Following Anderson-Staley’s talk, guests are invited to use provided materials including digital negatives, plants, and paper to create unique cyanotype prints inspired by Anderson-Staley’s practice. The workshop is free and open to the public, and all materials are provided. Guests are welcome to bring their own natural materials to use during the workshop.

If you are interested in creating a cyanotype image from an existing photograph, follow the Photoshop instructions in this video, and email your JPG file to info@fotofest.org with the subject line “Contact Negative.” FotoFest will print your negative on transparency paper at no charge.

Registration is not required but is encouraged. To register to attend, follow the link below.

About the Speaker

Keliy Anderson-Staley was a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow and a 2013 George and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellow. She has received additional project support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, Puffin Foundation, and Houston Arts Alliance. She has been an artist-in-residence at Light Work in Syracuse, Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester and Aurora Photo Center in Indianapolis.

Collections holding her work include the Library of Congress, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Houston Airport System, Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Portland Museum of Art. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at Akron Art Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Southeast Museum of Photography, Shelburne Museum, Ogden Museum of Southern and Morris Museum of Art. On a Wet Bough, a monograph of her tintype portraits, was published by Waltz Books in 2014. Documents & Dwellings, a catalog for her solo exhibition at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas was published in 2022.

She holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from Hunter College. She is an Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media at the School of Art, University of Houston. 

www.andersonstaley.com

Image: Keliy Anderson-Staley, Hand Gesture, 2022. Cyanotype wall installation. Image courtesy of the artist.