Mark Roberts Biography
Mark gave up a performing career when Ansel Adams introduced him to photography in the mid-1950s. He was a participant in the first California Gifted Kids Program at Stanford University, receiving a Masters in music. In 1978, with encouragement from Robert Mapplethorpe, he published the "Adam without Eve" portfolio. He continued to work in large format photography until 1982 when he studies with Pierre Cordier who originated the chemigram process. At this point Mark's work underwent a dramatic change and he started working almost entirely with chemigrams, producing a body of work that centered on themes such as the Holocaust and Lost musical Manuscripts. He also experimented with Polaroid materials, producing hand-manipulated images as large as 4'x4' in dimension. Mark continues to work primarily with alternative processes in photography along with sculptural form. In 2006 his work was features in the book, Alternative Photography: Art and Artists, Edition I by Malin Fabbri. He draws heavily on his early musical experiences, which are reflected in much of his work. The "Art of the Catacomb" series, although not musical in content, displays a "grid structure" much like a manuscript, and the colors and forms of the figures are really quite tonal in content.
| | Denise Rouleau Biography
Denise was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota. She spent two years living and traveling throughout Europe before getting her BA in 1998 in international relations and Italian literature at the University of Minnesota. During a fifth year of studies at the University of Bologna she attended a Byzantine art course, which perked a growing interest in medieval art. Three years later she returned to Italy to study traditional mosaic methods at the Cooperative Mosaica in Ravenna, and currently reinterprets these techniques using natural materials that are indigenous to Minnesota. Over the past four years she has turned to sculptural forms in collaboration with Mark Roberts, exhibiting first "the college of Cardinals" in 2004 at the Vision VIII International Juried show in Convington, Kentucky and debuting in 2005 the exhibition "Art of the Catacomb" in Minneapolis. The past year examples of the series have been featured at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, Florida and Gallery Sei-Un-Do in Zurich, Switzerland. Most recently, she and Mark have expanded their collaboration with the "Last Polaroid Show," an ongoing project of manipulated Polaroid film imagery centered on the surroundings of Como Conservatory in St. Paul, MN.
|
