Artist Statement

Securing Shadows explores the transience of childhood from my perspective as a mother. These images are photograms, one of the earliest forms of photography. No camera is used. Instead, I am working with my family and myself as subjects, laying our bodies directly on top of light-sensitive paper to create white silhouettes. These images draw upon personal symbolism and reenact moments from our daily lives, including the imaginative play-worlds of my children.

Motherhood has given me a new sense of time and mortality. Since becoming a parent, I often find myself feeling nostalgic in the present moment. I have an aching awareness that this time with my children, as children, is so brief. Like Wendy from Peter Pan, I am desperately trying to pin down the shadows of my ever-growing children. This work also ponders the transcendental connection I feel towards my daughters. I look into their eyes and think, I have known you all my life. How are we connected to all life stretching back to its beginning?


Bio

Amy Lovera is an artist whose work is rooted in imaginative storytelling and the interplay between reality and fiction. Her narrative works translate personal histories through reenacting them as photographs, animations, drawings and performances. Lovera’s work has been screened, exhibited and published both nationally and internationally, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the RISD Museum and Mexico’s Fine Art Photography journal, Luna Córnea. Lovera is a recipient of the Make Art individual artist grant awarded by the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts. She has also been awarded grants from LEF Foundation, Bridgewater State University and RISCA’s Aaron Siskind Fellowship in Photography. She holds an MFA in photography from Rhode Island School of Design with a certificate in reflective collegiate teaching from Brown University. Lovera is an Associate Professor in the Art & Art History Department at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. She makes her home and work in Barrington, Rhode Island.

This work is made possible in part by a grant from Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and a Faculty/Librarian Research Grant from Bridgewater State University.