Exhibits
Abstract art frees the viewer to create their own universe out of someone's marks. The universe's marks lie squarely in the representational. Or maybe not. CP
For list of current galleries please go to Purchasing.
2010
Glass Transformed, Solo Exhibit, Packard Reath Gallery, Lewes, DE. June 26 - July 30. Opening June 26, 5-7.
Glass Transformed, Solo Exhibit, Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, MA. August 10 - October 10.
Layerings (A Glimpse of Southeast Asia), Solo Exhibit, Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, Annapolis, MD. Opening November 5.
2009
American Photographs from the 1950's till Now: The Collection in Focus, Group Show, permanent collection of the Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD
2008
Sea Glass: The Art Photography of Celia Pearson, presented by the New Bedford Museum of Glass, Sandwich Glass Show, Sandwich, MA
Untitled, Group Exhibit of Selected Architectural Photographers celebrating FOTOWEEK DC, Cross MacKenzie Ceramic Arts, Washington, DC.
Things That Grow, Solo Exhibit, Annapolis Collection Gallery, Annapolis, MD
2007
Things of This World, Solo Exhibit, Arts Council of Anne Arundel County, Annapolis, MD
Pure Sea Glass, Solo Exhibit, East End Gallery, Nantucket, MA
LifeLines, Solo Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
2006
Kaleidoscopic, Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
The Landscape, Group Exhibit, Mulry Fine Art, West Palm Beach, FL
Pure Sea Glass, Solo Exhibit, Rogers Gallery, Mattapoisett, MA
Gatherings, Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
Sequences and Consequences, Group Exhibit Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
2005
Unwrapped, Group ExhibitCarla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
Sea Glass, Solo Exhibit, Packard Reath Gallery, Lewes, DE
Spectrum, Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
Art on Paper, Juried Group Exhibit, Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD
Traces, Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
Spring Show, Group Exhibit, Packard Reath Gallery, Lewes, DE
By the Board, Group Exhibit, Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD
Still in the Moment, Solo Exhibit, TAI Sophia Institute, Laurel, MD
Sea Glass, Solo Exhibit, Aurora Gallery, Annapolis, MD
Introducing Celia Pearson, Solo Exhibit, Jayson 15, Washington, DC
2004
Shaped by Wind and Water, Small Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
Pure Sea Glass, Solo Exhibit, Packard Reath Gallery, Lewes, DE
Latitudes - Mind & Matter, Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
Celia Pearson Photographs, Exhibition & Benefit for Hospice, Solo Exhibit, 49 West Gallery, Annapolis, MD
Winter Exhibition, Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
2003
Group Exhibit, Headquarters, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC
Spring Art Loop, Group Exhibit, Packard Reath Gallery, Lewes, DE
Landscape: A Unique View, Small Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
Beach, Group Exhibit, Packard Reath Gallery, Lewes, DE
Summer, Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
2002
A Moveable Feast, Group Exhibit, Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD
Interiors, Small Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
September, Group Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD
1999-2001
Small Works, Group Exhibit, Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD
Untitled, Small Group Exhibit, Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD
Art on Paper, Juried Group Exhibit, Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD
Artist's Statements
2010 For Glass Transformed Exhibits, Packard Reath Gallery and Cape Cod Museum of Art
While I love the beauty I witness all around me, I am as compelled by something I cannot see as much as that which I can see. We have many names for it - energy, ch'i, life force, God, spirit. Can a photograph record what cannot be seen? I have an affinity for photographing with my camera only inches from my subjects. It's as though I'm convinced that the closer I get, the more the surface will dissolve and I might, maybe, just maybe, somehow see inside and touch the miracle, touch the spirit within these things.
Of course I am not actually photographing things. I am, rather, photographing light as all photographers do. I have always been drawn to the beauty of natural light, what is known in our craft as "available light." If I am working in an environment I can control, sometimes I will influence the light somewhat by blocking or reflecting, but primarily I concentrate on my emotional and sensual response to the light that is offered.
My impulse to photograph has always come from some deep internal place. I am guided by those moments that take my breath away, but for a long time my focus was on recording what was external, outside myself. My desire was to be the best, most astute observer possible - never mind that I was being transported. Now I understand that there is power in the dance between the internal and the external, between the world outside of me and the world inside of me. So now my images are about both (though don't ask me how), and self expression seems not only desirable but inevitable.
For many years I printed Ilfochromes (also known as Cibachromes), a traditional photographic color process. Now I am embracing the digital universe. I am still in love with film and continue to make transparencies. I can't imagine giving up their beauty, nor entirely giving up being able to hold in my hand the result of what I see. I have begun to photograph with digital cameras as well, and am fascinated by their own distinct characteristics. These days all my prints are archival inkjet prints, some made by my own hand but many with the assistance of two excellent printers. The creative control remains mine, regardless of who is handling the paper. Since the prints are inkjet, if I have begun with a film original, it is scanned first so that the image becomes a digital file. Though there are endless opportunities for manipulation with Photoshop, I tend to use it to refine rather than to transform.2008 For Things That Grow Exhibit, Annapolis Collection Gallery
It is an amazing and wonderful process to photograph "things that grow". I have always loved natural forms and from the very beginning I have had a penchant for photographing with my camera only inches from my subjects.
What I am seeing as I stand with my camera gives me a sense of joy, freedom, and belonging. How can I not try to pass that on?
2007 For LifeLines Exhibit, Carla Massoni Gallery
To visit the Carla Massoni Gallery is often to feel a sense of sanctuary. I can breathe, find myself exhaling. The places that draw me to them with my camera in hand are a similar experience. The sanctuary of a well known shore, a field, a garden, a path to the sea, a greenhouse, a wood, a marsh—I can breathe in these places. A door opens to being present, fully absorbed.
I venture close in order to photograph what I feel—spirit by way of form and light. Sometime this happens after I (or others) have carried away a small memory of such a place. Focusing on these forms and experiencing them physically and sensually can open a door for me into something else that is unseen. When that happens these bits of shell and stone, glass, rock, leaf, reed, and blossom become my lifeline to spirit, and so, in turn, the world becomes my lifeline to you.
2006
For thirty years I have been standing behind my camera looking at things and my photographs are a journal of my observations of the world about me. I am summoned by my subjects—stones and plants, shells and sea glass, facades, interiors—for reasons I do not fully understand.
My images have generic names—"Vase", "Clam Shells", "Amaryllis"—because I feel I am photographing something that really cannot be named. Artist Anne Truitt writes in Daybook that life presents to her "external equivalents for truths which I already in some mysterious way know." Similarly, my subjects seem to be my way into something profound, which I recognize and discover simultaneously. I lead and am led. Perhaps viewers in turn witness a truth, perhaps very different from mine, but one which they, too, recognize and discover simultaneously. It is as though we are each forever learning what we already know.
2005
The photographs I currently am making for exhibition seem to dance somewhere between the representational and the abstract. Even in my assignment photography when I am looking at an interior or a garden I am seeing shapes and lines and weight, texture, color, light, and how they work to form a whole within the boundaries of my chosen frame. As I am making images, they seem only secondarily to be about structures, or rooms, or plants, or shells and stones, or sea glass.
My process is an exercise I have been repeating for years behind the camera. I explore angles of view and choose one. Adjust and readjust the tripod as I refine the limits of my frame. I decide about point of focus and depth of focus, discover and accept the constraints of the camera, resolve issues of lighting, look and look and look again through the viewfinder. Fully absorbed in this process, I am seeking something. I know I have found it when my mind stills, I exhale, and wonder once again takes over.