Artist's Statement:
Born in Lexington, VA, I rarely ventured outside small Southern towns until I spent my college junior year abroad. No doubt that's the reason that to this day, I am still a bit awestruck by new places--which are the inspiration for and subject of my work. Another significant autobiographical detail is that I have always pieced together layered things--clothes, quilts, silkscreen prints, books, pictures--when I wasn't at day jobs, as an academic librarian, bibliographer, writer, editor, project manager. When my children went to college, I returned to school as well, eventually "emerging" as an artist who still makes layered things, this time in the form of photograph collages.
Each collage consists of hundreds of pieces and/or layers, constructed using anywhere from 25 to 75 individual photographs, taken by me. Most of the subjects to date have been urban scenes: train stations, familiar streets, architectural landmarks, or popular destinations. Initially influenced (transported, is more like it) by David Hockney's "joiners" and photo-collages, I experiment with digital techniques for combining photograph fragments. It is an intuitive process, beginning with the image capture stage, all the way through--months later--to the recreated scene. Each collaged image is about what is happening in the specific place, and often about the people who pass through the space during a particular time when I was present too. I am fascinated by the ways in which strangers share not only the place, but its appealing, evocative nature as well.
The collages are also about sensing; how the (or, at least, my) brain works to assemble bits and pieces of information it perceives into a coherent whole--that resembles, but can never exactly replicate, what is actually there, including the emotional charge. And they are about patterns, about how the mind searches for the familiar, while trying to make sense of what is new; and to find a place for that, alongside what it already knows. It is a process that is iterative, dynamic, static, random, orderly, musical, mathematical, chaotic, and even magical, all at the same time; yet somehow we understand it, at least on some level.
PATRICIA MCCLUNG
EDUCATION
AA, Photography, Foothill College
MA, History, University of Virginia
SM, Simmons College
AB, Randolph-Macon Woman's College
EXHIBITIONS
2010
Patricia McClung, Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, ID
2009
Homage to the Artists, Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, ID
Magic in the Mix, PhotoCentral Gallery, Hayward, CA
Parklands, Filoli Center, Woodside, CA
Los Angeles Art Show, LA Convention Center, CA
PhotoLA, Santa Monica, CA
2008 and May 2009
Affordable Art Fair, NYC
2008
18@modern, Modernbook Gallery, Palo Alto, CA
2007
Visual Echoes [solo show], Lobby of 199 Fremont St. San Francisco, CA
Pathways, Stanford Center for Nursing Excellence, Palo Alto, CA
18 Photograph Collages, Stanford University Art Spaces, Palo Alto
Visual Journeys, PhotoCentral Gallery, Hayward, CA
2006
Palo Alto Weekly Award Show, Palo Alto Art Center, CA
AWARDS
2007
Mike Ivanitsky Award for Photographic Excellence, Foothill College.
League for Innovation Outstanding Artist.
2006
Excellence in Photography Award, Foothill College.
First Place, Palo Alto Weekly Annual Photography Contest.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"A New Perspective" by Rebecca Wallace. Cover story, Palo Alto Weekly: www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly: August 10, 2007 issue.
Co-Editor of two-volume work: Images Online and Delivering Digital Images, The Getty Information Institute, Los Angeles, 1998.