PreK–12 Educator Workshop: Experimental Photography

Educators of all backgrounds and levels are invited to a guided tour of the exhibition and a workshop practicing photography techniques.

During the art-making session, participants will learn from the artistic practice of Heather Bennett, senior lecturer in the Sam Fox School. Educators will discover how to create photographs using light-sensitive plant matter by creating colorful printing surfaces with organic materials such as beets, berries, and turmeric, layering them with a positive image, and using sunlight to produce contact prints known as anthotypes. Bennett will also demonstrate chlorophyll printing–a process that uses fresh leaves as printing paper.

Dinner will be provided. Prior experience is not necessary to participate. Space is limited, and registration is required.

About the Facilitator

Heather Bennett maintains a multimedia practice consisting of photography, video, drawing, text, sculpture, and installation and often collaborates with musicians and writers. Her work traces the female subject and its historic irrelevance, focusing on representation in contemporary culture. By disrupting assumptions, she attempts to realign and reframe, even recreate, the relegated, feminine-tinged space.

Bennett’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, including six solo exhibitions in New York City with Stephan Stoyanov Gallery. Bennett’s solo exhibition The Uncovered Works of Hannah Berman was hosted by Eva Hober Gallery in Paris, and her works have been exhibited at Graffit Gallery, Bulgaria; Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art, Austria; and Gallieri S. E. in Norway, among others. She has participated in FIAC Contemporary Art Fair, Paris,; LOOP Contemporary Art Fair, Barcelona; and ROMA Contemporary Arts Fair, Rome. Her work has been the subject of reviews in varied publications such as Artnet, Art Review Magazine, Art Press, Art Papers, The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, and Hyperallergic. A monograph of Bennett’s work was published in conjunction with Stephan Stoyanov Gallery iin 2010 called Sidetrack: (Snapshots, Outtakes and Polaroids 2001-2008), covering eight years of work with essays by feminist art historian and critic Jenni Sorkin and former MFA Boston curator and current custodian of the Holtzer Family Foundation, William Stover.

Bennett earned a bachelor of arts and bachelor of fine arts at WashU and a master of fine arts at Hunter College in New York. Her work is represented by Gallieri S. E. in Norway and Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis. She is a senior lecturer in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at WashU, where she joined the faculty as the Louis D. Beaumont Visiting Artist Fellow in 2013.

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