Mental Pictures by Diane Durant
June 1 - June 28, 2018
Reception: June 1, 2018; 6 - 9pm
Addressing notions of readership, storytelling, and the relationship between the visual and verbal, Mental Pictures combines the elements of information and representation common in a gallery setting—from framed gelatin silver contact prints and vinyl vignettes to descriptive wall labels and narrative statements—to develop new plot lines, characters, settings, and shared narrational experiences. Language dominates the space as the verbal, now written, is made visual and unfolds as unique pictures in the mind of each viewer who now acts as both image-maker and storyteller.
Bio
Diane Durant (b. 1978) works with image, text, and found objects to tell true stories, from paddling rivers and road trips to all the everyday stops in between. She is a graduate of Baylor University (BFA '01), Dallas Theological Seminary (MA/BC '04), and the University of Texas at Dallas (MA '07, PhD '13) where she currently serves as Senior Lecturer in Photography and Assistant Director of the Photography Program. She is the former president of 500X Gallery in Dallas and past editor of The Grassburr,The Rope, Sojourn, and Reunion: The Dallas Review. In 2017, she edited and wrote the introduction for Rozafa's Milk, an anthology of poems from the Albanian-American Society of Writers published by Mundus Artium Press. Her photographs have been exhibited coast to coast, from San Francisco and Seattle to New York and Vermont, with a few stops in the Midwest along the way. Her work has also been featured online with Don't Smile, AINT-BAD, and Lenscratch. In 2015, Diane took her adventuring to Wyoming as the Artist-in-Residence at Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. The following year, her photographs were included in Bighorn Canyon's updated hiking guide, which was published by the Western National Parks Service. Her work is currently included in a longterm temporary installation organized by the National Park Service at the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne. Diane is a member of both the Leadership Team for the Society for Photographic Education's LGBTQ Caucus and the Board of Directors for the Cedars Union, a non-profit arts incubator in North Texas. More often than not, she eats cake for breakfast.
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