PaperCity’s June cover is a marriage between image and text, art and fashion by Dallas-based Susan kae Grant, who exemplifies the best of the contemporary Texas art world. Grant — who has shown from the contemporary biennale in Florence to FotoFest in Houston — heads the photography and book-arts area at Texas Woman’s University in Denton. Her photography has earned great renown;
PaperCity photo editor Jenny Antill sighted her “Night Journey” series at Houston’s 2010 FotoFest. Part fantasy, part archetype, it’s based on clinical sleep research conducted at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where the artist cast herself as a subject awakened from REM sleep, then questioned and recorded. From these dream diaries, she conjured narratives by enlisting models and props en studio to realize her vision. We think Grant’s hypnotic shadow portraits would make a wonderful, alternative wedding portrait. Shown: Susan kae Grant’s
There Is an Understanding, from the “Night Journey” series, 2006, archival pigment print photograph; $1,200 to $4,500 (based upon image size and edition), through Conduit Gallery, Dallas;
conduitgallery.com.
Catherine D. Anspon
Image: © Susan kae Grant