July 4 – September 4, 2022
Artist Book Signing | Thursday 7 July, 2022 6 to 8pm
Online Artist Talk with Sal Taylor Kidd & Dawn Surratt | Wednesday 27 July, 2022 7pm Eastern
The Touchstones project is a visual conversation between artists Sal Taylor Kydd and Dawn Surratt. This project explores themes of connection, isolation and loss as well as adaptability and creativity as the world has been challenged with a life threatening pandemic. Both artists live on the East coast, separated by two thousand miles in physical terms, but less than a minute in the virtual sense. Through a series of photographic diptychs and poems, the work has evolved as a call and response, as they each responded to the other’s work, pairing photographs and writing, building on the foundation of trust and understanding that continues to grow between the two artists.
About Sal Taylor Kydd
Maine-based photographic artist and writer Sal Taylor Kydd uses various photographic media in a personal narrative that explores themes around memory and belonging; combining her poetry with alternative processes of photography and object-making.
Sal’s fine art photographs have been exhibited throughout the country and internationally, including Barcelona, San Miguel De Allende, Portland, Boston and Los Angeles; and she has been featured in numerous publications, including Don’t Take Pictures Magazine, Lenscratch, Diffusion Annual and The Hand magazine.
Sal has self-published a number of books combining her poetry with her photographs. Her books are in private and museum collections throughout the country including The Getty Museum, Bowdoin College, The Peabody Essex Museum and the Maine Women Writer’s Collection at the University of New England.
Sal’s latest book “Yesterday”, produced by Datz Press, is a limited edition book of poems and photographs that explores our sense of loss around the pandemic of 2020.
Originally from the UK, Sal earned her BA in Modern Languages from Manchester University in the UK and has an MFA in Photography from Maine Media College in Rockport, where she now lives with her husband and two teenagers.
About Dawn Surratt
Dawn Surratt earned a B.A. in Studio Arts from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and a Bachelor and Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Georgia. Her years of work with dying patients in hospice settings is the backbone of her imagery combining photographs with
photography based book structures, installations, and objects as visual meditations exploring concepts of grief, transition, healing and spirituality.
Her work has been widely published for book covers and publications such as Time, Bloomberg Business Week, Lenscratch, SHOTS, Diffusion and The Hand. She has exhibited in galleries across the United States including The Center for Fine Art Photography, Southeast Center for Photography, A.Smith Gallery, Photoplace Gallery and Power Plant Gallery.
She was a 2016 and 2020 Critical Mass Finalist and her work is in collections across the United States including the Rubinstein Library at Duke University, Archive of Documentary Arts. She is a 2018 nominee for the Royal Photography Society’s 100 Heroines.
Dawn is a full time artist living in rural North Carolina and teaches multi-media process and photography object work through Maine Media Workshops and College.
You can find her roaming the countryside with her camera, her husband, and their Pembroke Welsh Corgi Winston who doubles as their photography assistant.
