Liese Ricketts
Liese Ricketts, is a multidisciplinary photo-artist: a sculptor, a conceptualist, an installation artist, and a mixer of media to make stunning surreal photographs. Her tableaux of fossils, antiques, vintage art, clay sculptures, paint, and, sometimes, items from Amazon tell personal stories with universal impact. Her stories range from sharply-pointed and political to whimsical and nostalgic. Her messages are affecting and clear, but collage, with its aggregation of otherwise mismatched items (each with its own history and connotations) leaves plenty of room for us to personalize with our own imaginative projections. Her title, Incorporation, describes her way of thinking and working and it suggests that we, on the outside, are actually always part of the mixture.
"Unlike other, more typical collages, my work is made of my own photographs, clay pieces, assemblages, physical objects I own and alter, and my morgue of antique imagery. I "incorporate" all the elements that I make and collect. It works especially well for me for two reasons. From a practical perspective, photographs can be reprinted if destroyed, and, from an aesthetic and philo-sophical point of view, I am so happy to be able to make new work that integrates all aspects of my practice together. I don’t know if I will ever photograph again. It seems redundant given the thousands of images I have taken, all of which I need to rediscover in a new light. I do not like digital cameras at all. I use my phone to document work, but the photos included in my work are mostly old ones, made on film. I will use some found imagery as well. I love old historical texts. And I LOVE digital printing. The papers are unbelievable. That is a whole different bag. I still have a darkroom at home, but it will probably store my art tools in the future."