SUSAN MIKULA
 

BIOGRAPHY

Susan Mikulas elusive art challenges conventions. Her physical subject matter is often abstracted, sometimes highly so, and typicallyportrayed within a tight chromatic range; one that, nonetheless, contains an expansive scale of tone and texture. Yet to call her art abstract is a misnomerthe end result often remains strongly figurative, even when no longer overtly identifiable with its origins. Distillation is a more apt description of her process.

Mikulas creative roots rest deep in the aesthetic legacies of painting and photography, so its no surprise that her art is sometimes taken for paintingbut it is photography. Shooting exclusively with Polaroid films and cameras, Mikula works in available light, and does no cropping or image manipulation after the fact. Her in-camera technique strips away detail and softens edges only to better reveal the underlying and essential form and feeling of her subject.

To capture and convey beauty as she sees it is always a present element in the work, but it is rarely only about the inherent interplay of shade, color and form. There is a conceptual underpinning as well, and a narrative within. Mikula also has an abiding concern with the physicality of the prints themselves: the materials and methods of their manufacture, the structure and character of their surfaces and supports, their scale and their modes of presentation, and how those all affect the relationship between the viewer and the art. Where certain aspects of her aesthetic reach back to the 19^th century Tonalists, these other facets of her creative process put her very much in sync with contemporary practice. The result is work of depth and enduring impact.

Born and raised first in urban/industrial New Jersey, and then in a small New Hampshire town, Mikula now lives and works in rural Western Massachusetts and in New York City.

SOLO SHOWS

• 2010: American Vale: Recent Photographs
  Ferrin Gallery, Pittsfield, MA

• 2010: American Device: Recent Photographs
  George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA

• 2009:bearings
  TJ Walton Gallery, Provincetown, MA

• 2008:sic transit
  CHC Gallery, New York, NY

• 2007: omnivore
  The Boston State House, Boston, MA

• 2006: 9 Portraits
  Installation at the Three County Fairgrounds, Northampton, MA

• 2005: still, moving pictures
  Hosmer Art Gallery, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

• 2003: Civil Twilight
  Gallery 120, Florence, MA

• 2002: New Beauty
  Cummington Community House, Cummington, MA

• 2001: After Reprimand
  Pivot Gallery, Florence, MA

• 1998: Lux in Tenebris
  Northampton Center for the Arts, Northampton, MA

SELECTED GROUP and JURIED EXHIBITIONS

• 2010: Aqua10: Aqua Art MiamiWilliam Baczek Fine Arts, Miami, FL

• 2010: New YorkGeorge Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA

• 2010: The 2010 Landscape ExhibitionWilliam Baczek Fine Arts, Northampton, MA

• 2009: Trans-FocusGeorge Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA

• 2009: Fall Inaugural ExhibitionShasta College Art Gallery, Redding, CA

• 2009: FRESH: New Art, New ArtistsFerrin Gallery in Pittsfield, MA

• 2009: Women: Portrait + FigureFerrin Gallery in Pittsfield, MA

• 2004: Viva! PolaroidA.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, MA

• 1999: The Art of PhotographyArmory Art Center, West Palm Beach, FL

• 1999: 43rd Annual International Awarded Exhibition San Diego Art Institute,
  San Diego, CA

• 1998: National Photography CompetitionSt. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery,
  New York, NY

• 1998: State of the Arts 98Oregon

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• 2009: Susan Mikula, Photographs, 2008Luxxus Press
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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