BIOGRAPHY

April Day

Per.1 & Per.4

Photography

 

Mary Mattingly

 

            What I most like about Mary’s work is the themes she does. My inspirational theme from her is the one of Humans and the relationship with the environment. Mary was born on 1978 in Rockville, Connecticut. She lives in New York now, were she had studied in a school of design. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.

            In her work, she likes portraying themes such as home, travel, cartography, and human’s relationship with each other, with the environment, with machines, and with corporate and political entities. She is most recognizable for creating photographs and sculptures and representing futuristic and obscure landscapes, also for making her sculptures wearable. She is also aware of the environment and you can see that she portrays many ecological messages for example when she did the Waterpod in 2009.

            What you can notice in her work also is how she provides a vision of the future. What Mary also does though is she takes her time to plan a future sort of scenario. Either way her work is always environmentally and politically concerned involved because that is what she actually focuses in her life. Many of her finished work also are the result of her personality, through her products being used, whether she shows it through the clothes, cultural stamps or some other decorations that she has decorated.

            In an interview, she was asked about the process she goes through to complete her work. She said that first she begins with a specific or general story that she has the feeling she needs to say. Than, she begins to create a sculpture or collect images to create something physical to fill in the composition-a new place. After she does that, she begins to choose a natural background. From there, she makes them perform out and she photographs. Choosing her backgrounds of nature comes from the inspiration of her trying to live very humanely, with her interactions with others, with animals, and with nature.

            Seeing her work as how she connects nature with fashion and how she is trying to talk about the environment is also, what I am trying to do. Mattingly uses the fashion and sculpture as an element to add onto her composition. She decides to use a nature background because that is her theme; it is always based on nature. Seeing the way she can compose these to, I know in order to make a good photograph I have to make sure that my models interact with nature and capture the moment.