Anywhere but Here, Scene 2 by Karen Connell
Born in Chicago, Karen Connell received her BA from Depauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design. Solo Exhibitions include "Karen Butler: New Work" at Pridimore Taylor Gallery in Chicago, "Karen Butler: New Places" at the Robert Lehman Art Center in North Andover, Massachusetts. Her work has been included in "Travel" at San Francisco State University; "Biennial 1998" at the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; the "73rd Annual International Printmaking Exhibition" at the Print Center, Philadelphia; and "New Art" at the Louisiana State University Museum, Baton Rouge. She was an Associate Professor of Digital Media at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, and an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Delaware. Connell currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
The desire to establish a point of view and the frustration of that desire are the subjects of Karen Connell's Anywhere but Here, a series of idealized seascapes. Using acetate, vacuum-formed plastic, colored lights, and a variety of commercially printed "sky" backdrops, Connell created tabletop dioramas of nearly featureless seascapes that she then photographed with a macrolens and printed as large-scale Cibachromes. Her saturated images invite a reverie, but in actuality offer only a simulation. This series was included as part of The Sea & The Sky, an exhibition curated by Patrick Murphy and Richard Torchia in 2000 at Beaver College Art Gallery in Glenside, Pennsylvania and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. This exhibition also included works by such well-known artists as Vija Celmins, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Nesbit, Gerhard Richter and Wolfgang Tillmans.