Artist Statement

I began my life as an artist as a painter. I came to photography relatively late in school but found that I preferred the depth and layering that I was able to create with the photographic medium. I found that my photographs had a painterly feel due to my earlier training. My works tonal qualities, textural components, and layers mimic a painterly process.

When I began to explore photography further, my photographs became abstracted as my paintings had been. In essence, I would create abstract still-life environments to shoot instead of focusing on scenes that occurred in nature. I then discovered the Photogram. These are made solely by painting with light directly on photosensitive paper rather than using a camera, film, and a resulting negative. I am drawn to this medium because it goes beyond the conventional realm of photography. While exploring this alternative photographic process I discovered I was more able to create the depth I wanted to portray than with traditional photography.

I strive to create ethereal and infinite spaces into which the viewer is transported to another world. Often in my work, I am attracted to the portrayal of individual objects within vast spaces and will place organic or biomorphic objects within these planes. Most recently I have begun to add a further dimension to my Photograms and photographs by using them as a canvas for painting and drawing.

Biography

STARR TUCKER-ORTEGA
100 Manhattan Avenue
Apartment #412
Union City, NJ 07087
(201) 978-8287

Born 1975, Syracuse, New York
Lives and works in Union City, New Jersey

EDUCATION

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York
1999 MFA, Painting and Photography

College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina
1997 BFA, Studio Art
1997 BFA, Art History

EXHIBITIONS

March 2004 - Hob-Art Group Show, Symposia Bookstore, Hoboken, N.J.
February 2004 - Photography Today, Symposia Bookstore, Hoboken, N.J.
January 2004 - Hob-Art Group Show, Symposia Bookstore, Hoboken, N.J.
November 2003 - Hob-Art t Group Show, Symposia Bookstore, Hoboken, N.J.
October 2003 - Hoboken Artist Studio Tour, Hoboken, N.J.
October 2003 - First Sundays, Monroe Center for the Arts, Hoboken, N.J.
September 2003 - Hoboken Arts and Music Festival, Hoboken, N.J.
September 2003 - First Sundays, Monroe Center for the Arts, Hoboken, N.J.
August 2002 - Christies Summer Art Show, New York, N.Y.
August 2000 - Christies East Summer Art Show, New York, N.Y.
April 1999 - Thesis Show, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y.
1997 - Recent Graduate Art Show, College of Charleston, Charleston, S.C.
1997 - Young Contemporaries Art Show, College of Charleston, Charleston, S.C.

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Craig and L.K. Metz, Atlanta, GA
Thibaut A. Paciello, Hoboken, NJ