"String of Hearts" Exhibition and Lecture at Akron Museum of Art

I will be delivering a lecture about this show on April 12 at 6:30.http://akronartmuseum.org/pressreleases/details.php?unid=2643From the Press Release:String of Hearts: Photographs by Bea NettlesOn View March 10 – July 8, 2012Akron, Ohio, February 13, 2012 –It is said that the most personal artwork becomes universal. Often depicting the artist’s intimate family life, the photographs of Bea Nettles also speak to broader ideas of motherhood, teaching and what it means to be an artist.Featuring works from her most seminal series of photographs, String of Hearts, on view March 10 – July 8, spans nearly thirty years of the artist’s significant career.“Once I had my first child,” Nettles states, “I was connected to history.” It is her exploration of parental responsibility and inventive use of autobiographical images that are the focus of this exhibition in the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery at the Akron Art Museum.While Nettles is celebrated for her metaphoric views of domesticity, it is her experimental processes that animate her themes. She is among a group of pioneering artists who in the late 1960s and early 70s began inventing alternative photographic techniques to explore aspects of their emotional life in a symbolic rather than documentary manner.A leader of the handwork movement, Nettles augments her photographs with applied color, stitching, textiles and text. She is also known for her bookmaking. Through teaching and numerous publications including Breaking the Rules: A Photo Media Cookbook in 1977, Nettles’s innovative use of photographic imagery and processes have influenced generations of photographers.