Access: Artists in Residence Eileen Neff
IF YOU HAVE SPENT ANY TIME AT ALL IN OFFSITE, you’ve surely noticed Eileen Neff’s works. They are installed like a trail of breadcrumbs leading you through the space. Her photo-based images bring the natural world inside, inviting the viewer to pause and consider historic and contemporary concepts of picturing the natural and constructed world—a concept that seems particularly appropriate now. Eileen was kind enough to share with us a reflection on how her creative process has been impacted by the time she has spent in isolation during recent months. She even provided a sneak peek at some recent works!
IN HER OWN WORDS… A few months ago, I would have begun a description of my studio practice with the fact that most of my work includes the landscape as a primary element of the photographic constructions I create. Then I would have said that, as much as the landscape, I love engaging the conventions of seeing and picturing, and question how the world might be re-presented; these things are still true.
Of course, I’m spending most of my time inside these days, and gratefully, as I’ve always lived and worked in the same space, I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’m going to the studio, or when – I’m there.
My recent works were instigated by spending this heightened time reconsidering ongoing (postponed) projects as well as working with some new discoveries from the windows of my studio. The images with tape are cropped versions of my constructed-to-scale tests for future large prints that will be produced elsewhere, once elsewhere is back in business. I’m calling this group of images Work from Work. When my camera is not following me around the studio, it’s fixed on a tripod looking out of my windows.
I’m lucky to be able to stay close to what I love and value; it keeps me in the moment and sometimes even helps in keeping the uncertain future in the future.
BIO: Neff has been the recipient of many awards, including the John S. Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts Grant, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, and the Leeway Foundation Artist Grant. She has been awarded residencies at Monte Azul Center for the Arts, Talamanca Mountains, Costa Rica; The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; La Napoule Art Foundation, La Napoule, France; and Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, Clermont, KY.
Neff is a Resident Critic and Seminar Instructor in the MFA Program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She received her BFA in Painting from Philadelphia College of Art and her MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art. Neff is represented by Bridgette Mayer Gallery.