BIOGRAPHY:
Anna Reed received her BFA from Illinois Wesleyan University and her MA from the University of Illinois and a MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her digital and photo-based collages and drawings have been exhibited in galleries in Chicago and art shows across the United States. She currently teaches drawing, photography, and video at Leyden High Schools.
STATEMENT:
Our media saturated world shapes how we see and project ourselves by making daily events simultaneously precious and mundane. I am exploring the issues of self and the distortion of the self through changing digital forms and the use of media, particularly through the use of cell phones. These hand held personal devices are used intimately to create a curated and often fragmented virtual world. Our lives are often lived in response, or with intention, to the virtual world.
I started by creating portraits using a Xerox machine because it was immediate, low-tech, and distinctive in style. Other images are sources from scans. While the quality is similar the process of image creation is slower creating an intimate performance between human and the machine. The works are layered and collaged creating a complexity between what exists digitally and what is physical.
In my work I continue to question the boundary between the virtual and the individual.