Brianna Dowd says of her series, "Mother Pearl", "Mother Pearl is an exploration of a connection I feel to a woman who I have never known. While she and I have never met face to face, we are far from strangers. We are connected through lineage and bloodline; she is a part of who I am. She is beautiful, full of grace, and has a smile that lights up a room. Our relationship is unique, as I can engage with her only through
photographs, momentos, and dreams. Her life's story is a mystery to me, as I have little to no information to pull from. I am left with mere imaginations of this woman, who she is, and her Impact on my life. This woman is my grandmother, Margaret Dowd... Mother Pearl.

This body of work is a projection of images recording my innermost desires of what my relationship would have been like with my deceased grandmother, had we been afforded the chance to meet.In this series I have taken a variety of constructivist approaches to photography by staging memories I long to have created with her. Found photographs, personal objects belonging to my grandmother, and pearls are used to emphasize the closeness of her presence felt around and within me, as well as handwritten letters addressed to her, outpouring my emotions as I travel on this journey to know her deeper."

Brianna Dowd is an TN based artist whose background is in fine art photography and graphic design. She is a 2017 graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro obtaining a Bachelors of Fine Art degree, and is a 2023 graduate from the Savannah College of Art & Design obtaining a Master of Fine Arts degree.
Brianna is also the founder and CEO of Butterfly Visuals, LLC, a media company providing quality service to creative and goal oriented individuals in the areas of photography, graphic design, website design, promotional design, branding materials, social media content, and more.
Her photographic work is centered around themes of memory, loss, and identity. She utilizes the medium of photography as a means of storytelling, and as one to both convey and evoke emotion, and encourage interaction and dialogue with viewers.

https://www.briannadowd.com/
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Beth Galton says of her series, "Memory of Absence", "So much of who we are is passed from generation to generation—our genes, our behaviors - molded by our parents and grandparents. My mother’s relationship with her mother was fraught with difficulties and these same dynamics were passed onto me. I’ve spent many years contending with these issues by first becoming overly involved in my mother’s life and then ultimately removing myself. 

In 2017, my mother and father - who had not lived together for 50 years by that time - died within three days of each other. After my sister and I inherited my mother’s home, we were startled to find the extent to which she had been hoarding. We discovered her journals, copious letters written to family members and never sent, everyday objects and photographs depicting many family scenes that I have no memory of. A profound sadness combined with these surprising discoveries led to my creating this body of work exploring feelings, memories and even buried memories – all brought to the surface through these revelations.

In this series, Memory of Absence, I combined botanicals and natural materials together with the everyday objects and family photographs in order to convey a sense of memory and loss. The organic and volatile botanicals serve as a reminder of the ever-changing nature of memory and emotions—an unstable and profoundly unreliable process, as fragile as scraps of embroidery as complicated and garbled as tangles of magnetic tape. Text plays a key role as well, her words intertwined with mine.

My creative process begins with composing and photographing a still life of the botanicals together with the objects that I have collected and saved from my mother’s home. I then print out the image, create yet another still life by layering more objects with the print and then re-photograph this composition. Thereby giving a further sense of the complex and layered emotions found within family dynamics."

Beth Galton is a photo-based artist, with an educational background in the natural sciences and three decades of experience as a professional photographer in the editorial and commercial arena. These elements of her history are the lens through which she explores the world.

Collecting objects, allowing time to affect botanical matter, these are the tools Beth uses to construct still life portraits. The stories speak to the cycles of nature, our connection to aging and mortality, and the fragility and resilience of the human experience. As a lifelong learner, Beth uses current technology to help articulate her message. She loves to harness natural light to capture the compositions by using a large format camera and digital back.

Beth’s fine art and professional work have won numerous accolades and been exhibited extensively throughout her career. Several of her personal projects have gained national and international regard.

Beth lives and works in New York City, where she is moved and inspired by the city every day. 

https://www.instagram.com/bethgaltonstudio 
https://www.bethgaltonfineart.com