* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Dorothy O’Connor graduated with degrees in Literature and Studio Arts. Her photographs and installations feature thoughtfully composed and hand-crafted scenes which combine elements of still-life, portraiture, landscape and performance to produce unique and evocative works of art. She has received grants from Possible Futures, FLUX and the Forward Arts Foundation to present installations as public art and her photographs have been exhibited in galleries throughout the U.S. She began 2013 with an artist residency at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville where she built and presented her latest installation, “Shelter.” Her work is in the permanent collections of MOCA GA, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, the Center for Fine Art Photography and is included in many private collections.
She explains her work by saying, “My ongoing series “Scenes” centers around transforming spaces, often a room, into fantastical landscapes which frequently utilize elements of nature and the natural world to tell a story. Each concept, shaped predominantly by events in my life, creates a sort of conceptual autobiography. Building these life-sized installations also allows me to literally live inside my own imagination, if only for a short time and satisfies the need to create a more aesthetically pleasing reality. Each project takes months to complete, allowing me to fully immerse myself in its meticulous details. I enjoy creating many of the components in each set by hand: crocheting the ocean, crafting hundreds of paper birds, weaving a ceiling of roots from jute, etc.”
