Waves... Clouds... Streams Photographs by Nancy Hellebrand
October 22 through January 29
In the Annex Gallery

Click here for images...

Nancy Hellebrand's mature work has always searched for a transcendent reality that lies below the surface of the things in our everyday lives, whether she is photographing the abstract folds of an underarm or close-up fragments of handwriting. Her recent photographs of clouds and water continue this metaphysical abstraction and further push the boundaries of her subjects.

On Hellebrand's 40th birthday, she gave up photography for a year and embarked on a spiritual quest that encompassed meditation and the study of Eastern art and philosophy. When she returned to photography, she and her photos were changed. Later, in 1994, she began her first work in color photography during a series of taken on a New Jersey beach at sunrise. This series that became an epiphany, and clouds and water have occupied her since 2001.

Beginning with her clouds series, her meditation and artwork became one. "Water, sky, or other pictures convey a feeling of beauty very different from that of the subject matter... I have finally realized that my path as an artist is an integral part of my spiritual path".

The series of clouds freed her to depart more than ever from straight photography. "It is no longer the 'thing itself', which inspires me to photograph, but that aspect of experience which is beneath vision, physical touch or descriptive language. I want to photograph that which is purely energetic, which is beyond all that we see. Perhaps it can't actually be photographed, but the process of trying to do so is rich and deep".

She describes how digital photography allowed her to move away from her narrower and more traditional approach to her subject: "It took digital photography to free me from the narrowness of my own views. This is an incredible breakthrough for me. My concepts about what I see can finally loosen and begin to change. Traveling from the physical to the non-physical is now my mode from shooting the photograph to final print. I am only interested in abstracting. Describing is not my domain anymore".

Her most recent photographs of streams are large prints that become environments encompassing the viewer, presenting an uncertain sense of space or substance, where nothing is still or grounded, and in this shifting environment of color, motion and atmosphere, the viewer loses their sense of self, which is perhaps the point of the meditation that has become one with her art.

Nancy Hellebrand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her solo exhibitions include the National Portrait Gallery in London, two shows at Pace/MacGill in New York, and she has been participated in group shows organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Art Museum at Princeton University, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has taught at Yale University and the University of the Arts among other institutions.

This exhibit was made possible with the assistance of Katharine T. Carter & Associates.