Diane Meyer is interested in “the failures of photography in preserving experience and personal history.”

Meyer uses embroidery on original photographs to form a pixilated representation of the underlying image. She states, “The embroidery acts as a barrier to the image, allowing the viewer to see only a pixilated version of what’s behind it.”

Meyer photographed in Berlin, in the city center as well as the outskirts on the former path of the Berlin wall. She focused mainly on the locations with no visible traces of the actual wall, interested in the psychological weight of these sites. The embroidery is an important part of her process, “his aspect of the sewing emphasizes the unnatural boundaries created by the wall itself. The sewing, which is soft, provides a literal contrast to the concrete of the wall and a metaphorical contrast to its symbolism.”

Other images are based on family photographs. Meyer says, “I am interested in the disjunction between lived experience and photographic representation. As large areas of the photographs are concealed by the embroidery, small, seemingly trivial details emerge, while the larger picture and context become erased.”

“By having the embroidery take the visual structure of digital pixilation, a further connection is made between the human brain trying to retrieve information and digital storage.”

Also incorporating embroidery, “The tactile, hand-embroidered overlay not only relates to the digital aesthetic, but also hints at the growing trend of photos remaining primarily digital—stored on cell phones and hard drives, but rarely printed out into a tangible object. The images are based on photographs taken at various points in my life and arranged by location.”

Meyer has a Masters of Fine Arts from The University of California and a Bachelor’s Degree focusing in photography from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She has received numerous awards including the CFA Faculty College Fellowship and International Fellowship Award from Silver Eye Center for Photography.

Meyer has exhibited at the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA, University of Notre Dame, IN, Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA and A.I.R Gallery in New York City. Public art installations have been featured in Los Angeles, CA, The Jamaica Center for Art and Learning in Queens, New York and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Residency in the Woolworth Building.

Prior to the public reception, at 6:15 p.m., Jane Fulton Alt will give a non-formal gallery talk about her series, The Burn, featured in the Atelier Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Meyer’s work is included in the collections of the Newark Public Library and Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, Center for Photography at Woodstock. Photographs are also included in numerous private collections across the United States.

A catalog of  her  work is  available in the  Griffin Bookstore.