Atelier 31 | Meet the Artist – Anne Piessens

Artists are compelled to create. Painters, sculptors, mixed media artists and photographers all reach to express their vision with their hands and tools. Photography is unique, functioning as noun and verb in taking (creating) a photograph and producing an object, the photographic print. Anne Piessens uses the photographic print as a base to enhance her creative vision.  Her series, Meliorations, has moved from visual to tactile, with Piessens marking the prints with thread, inks and puncture holes. Photographs are precious objects, and with Anne Piessens touch of her hand, now a singular and unique piece to view and experience.

We are excited to have Anne join fellow Atelier artists Diane Cheren Nygren and William Morse for an online conversation happening April 9th at 7pm. You can find tickets for the event here.

 

About Meliorations

There is a large body of evidence about the healing power of nature – physical, emotional, and spiritual. Whenever cracks creep through me, time spent in nature helps to patch them.

This series represents my wishful thinking about how to heal nature in return. Like many people, I am horrified by the damage we are collectively inflicting on our natural environment. My photos conjure precipitation during the California wildfire season, restore local songbirds, and strengthen a local barrier island. Each image is an apology to a landscape I love.

Which of these images was the impetus for this series? How did it inform how you completed the series?

The full photo is a panorama, shot at Plum Island in Newburyport MA — a barrier beach that is rapidly eroding due to human activity and rising sea levels. I visited on a gray damp day on the heels of a Nor’easter. One end of the beach was cordoned off to protect crumbling cliff dunes. On the other end, vacation homes were being buttressed with trucked-in boulders. It felt like a senseless effort to buy time before the houses slide into the sea.

After printing the panorama, I felt compelled to somehow restore stability to this fragile landscape. Using embroidery thread, I sewed a line of pilings just off shore.

 

This became the first in a series of multimedia pieces aimed at restoring landscapes that have suffered the consequences of human activity. In addition to thread, the series incorporates screen-printing, calligraphy inks and pinholes.

How was the Atelier experience for you?

The Atelier class was hugely valuable. It exposed me to other photographers’ art and put me on a deadline to create a body of images. Meg Birnbaum is very skilled at asking questions, providing direction, and gently pushing students to edit their work. The class was exactly the jump-start I needed. I loved that each student had different talents and ideas, but together we became a supportive community.

What’s next? I’ll keep working on the Meliorations series. I’m trying to learn printmaking techniques like drypoint and monotype so I can incorporate more layers onto my photographic prints. I want to get better at lighting my photos. At this point it’s all about expanding the toolkit! And I’m planning to sign up for the Atelier class again in the fall.

 

About Anne Piessens –

Anne Piessens is a Boston-based fine art photographer whose work explores nature’s distinctive forms, as well as our relationship to the landscapes around us.

Her newest series, Meliorations, imagines ways to undo the damage that humans have inflicted on the natural world, and incorporates different media such as drawing inks and embroidery thread. Past projects include Things that Look Like Other Things, a tongue-in-cheek search for meaning in nature’s found objects, and In the Middle of Something, a portrait series about the tween years.

Anne Piessens studied photography with college instructors Emmet Gowin and Steve Fitch. After a hiatus, she began shooting and exhibiting in 2017. Her work has been shown at Concord Art and The Cambridge Art Association, MA; The SE Center for Photography, SC; Praxis Photo Arts Center, MN; and Photo Place Gallery, VT.

Find Anne Piessens

on the web

on Instagram @artane1