Name: Four Pears
Brand: Olivia Parker

Four Pears

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About the Item

The above Parker photograph is signed, titled, dated & editioned recto in ink by the artist. Olivia Parker began her career as a painter, and became involved in photography in 1970. Mostly self-taught, she began working in her studio, constructing images to be photographed. Her first book, "Signs of Life", featured simple images seen with keen insight: a perfect white orchid, a pair of ballet slippers, pea pods sitting on a counter. In Eggshells, four cracked white shells rest on a white counter, perfectly lit exposing their vulnerability; in Moon Snails, rows of snails are lined in a box, taking on the appearance of eyes staring out of a cabinet drawer. Her second book, "Under the Looking Glass", featured Parker's color work and interest in photographic collage, creating narratives about ancestry through the combination of old photographs, blooming flowers and aged fruit. While these images were small in nature (4 x 5" and 8 x 10"), Parker infused them with a heightened sense of reality that is exaggerated by color and light. As Mark Strand said in his introduction, "Olivia Parker's photographs contain a remarkable suggestive world of particulars – so suggestive, in fact, that we are not sure if we are looking at strange extensions of reality or colorful projections of dreams." Mostly self-taught she makes ephemeral constructions to photograph and experiments with the endless possibilities of light. She has had more than one hundred one-person exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and her work is represented in major private, corporate, and museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Portfolios of her work have been published in Art News, American Photographer, Camera, Camera Arts, The Sciences and numerous other magazines in the United States, Europe, and Japan. There have been three monographs of Parker’s work: Signs of Life (Godine, 1978), Under the Looking Glass (New York Graphic Society, 1983), and Weighing The Planets (New York Graphic Society, 1987). She has lectured and conducted workshops extensively both in the US and abroad. In 1996 she received a Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award. Residencies include Dartmouth College in 1988, The MacDowell Colony in 1993 and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1997.

Creator:
Olivia Parker (1941, American)
Creation Year:
1979
Dimensions:
Height: 10 in (25.4 cm)Width: 8 in (20.32 cm)
Medium:
Dye Transfer
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
1970-1979
Condition:
Edition of 30.
Gallery Location:
Chicago, IL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU89013138993