Exhibition Dates: March 5  – March 27, 2010
Opening Reception: First Friday Gallery Walk, March 5, 6-10pm

(Visual Art/Photography)
Location: Artspace, Lobby
 
Working with both traditional medium format film and digital editing and photography, Mary Shannon Johnstone seeks to expose the hidden and create what she refers to as visual poetry. She is drawn to emotive themes, metaphors, natural light, and anything both sad and beautiful. Her recent series Milkbones plays with shadows of her dogs and sidewalk chalk drawings, as the images act out the dogs’ dreams and desires.
 
Johnstone received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (’96), and MFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology (’01). She has had solo exhibitions in Chicago, Durham, Raleigh, and Rochester. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including three Best of Competition awards in the North Carolina Annual Photographers Exhibition. Her work has appeared in American Photo, Outdoor Photography, Popular Photography, and Peterson’s PhotoGraphics. Her work was also selected by Algonquin Books as the cover image for If You Want Me To Stay, a novel by Michael Parker. In 2008, Johnstone was chosen as one of 15 photographers for the highly competitive Pause, To Begin photography project. Most recently Johnstone was awarded the 2009 Carter Foundation Scholarship from Maine Media Workshops. She is also one of Photolucida’s 2009 Critical Mass Top 50 photographers, which was awarded by vote from over 200 gallery directors and curators nationwide. Her work is featured on the 2009 cover of the North Carolina Literary Review and the Winter 2009 issue of Visual Overture Magazine. Johnstone is a tenured Associate Professor of Art at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC