A Day in the Life

Curated by Cynthia Scott

An old adage credited to John Lennon tells us “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” The artists in this exhibition have found their own plans interrupted by various surprise events from the trivial to the cataclysmic – and have employed photography to help them process the experiences using creativity and their wits.

Many artists find themselves short on studio time on occasion when they have to take a job to pay the bills. Photography has served them as a form of note-taking, a memory jog of ideas for future works – or as a visual work itself. Jack Niven became enamored of the interplay of geometrics in the bridges he crosses daily on his way to and from movie sets. Elliott Stokes uses his commutes to capture images of landscapes that feed into his practice illustrating the relationship between place, industry and one’s labor. His drawings reflect the photographs’ feel without mimicry, and he often transfers photos onto his sculptures.

Events don’t get much more catastrophic than a Category 5 hurricane, and Jennifer Shaw found herself in the path of Hurricane Katrina when she was nine months pregnant. The path she and her husband took to find shelter and a safe place to birth their firstborn was turned into a delightfully witty photographic narrative which will be seen in its entirety in New Orleans for the first time for PhotoNOLA.

Jack Niven’s life was interrupted by major surgery, the rehabilitation of which involved daily walks around his neighborhood – moving slowly with a cane and eyes downcast to avoid pavement pitfalls. The resulting photo series of tiny smashed objects elevated to relic status reflects his journey back to health.

The universal lockdown and cessation of life as we know it during COVID-19 created an existential crisis of sorts for Cynthia Scott, a lifelong artist suddenly wondering if art was the right way for her to be expending her energy. While figuring it out she took a deep dive into sustainable agriculture, falling in love with the produce she grew and shared with neighbors and a local restaurant. The resulting photo series using vegetables, fruit and flowers posing as models illustrates the bounty enclosed in a tiny seed and serves up a basket of optimism moving forward.