Colette Campbell-Jones

American
Bio Statements More Portfolios

Stories from Underground -- Murals

How to use our image viewer

How to purchase a print

Colette Campbell-Jones Bio

Chronology
2006	Guest Lecturer with Debra Flemming Caffrey, Photo Alliance, San Francisco, California

2007	Guest Lecturer, Continuing Education, San Francisco Art Institute

2008	Guest Lecturer, Continuing Education, San Francisco Art Institute

2010	Guest Lecturer, Photography Department, Stanford University

	Top of Page

Awards
2008	Paul Sack Photography Award - 1st Place, San Francisco, California

2008	Ella King Tory Award for Excellence and Innovation, San Francisco, California

2008	Graduate Fellow Residency - Headlands Center for the Arts (2008-2009), Sausalito, California

2005	MFA Graduate Fellowship in Photography (2005-2007), San Francisco, California

	Top of Page

Solo Exhibitions
2011	Colette Campbell-jones Solo Debut Exhibition, Photo-Eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

2010	Light from Underground, Palo Alto Center for the Arts, Palo Alto, California

2008	Current Work, Still Lights Gallery, San Francisco, California

2008	Stories from Underground, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, California

2007	Emergent Oaks, Still Lights Gallery, San Francisco, California

2005	Continuing Student Work, Still Lights Gallery, San Francisco, California

	Top of Page

Group Exhibitions
2012	Contents: Love, Anxiety, Happiness and Everything Else Critical 2011, Photolucida Touring Exhibition,

2012	Crossing Territories/Arte Factum, Wall Space Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2011	Constructed Myths: Colette Campbell-jones & Won Seoung Won, Noorderlicht Gallery, The Netherlands

2011	Headlands Center for the Arts Benefit Auction, Herbst International Exhibition Hall, San Francisco, CA

2011	Bay Area Artists for Japan, Mina Dresden Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2011	Spring Open House, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

2011	Photo L.A., courtesy Photo-Eye Gallery, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA

2010	Spring Open House, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California

2009	Spring Open House, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California

2009	Project Space, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California

2009	Summer Open House, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California

2009	NextNew: Green, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose Museum, San Jose, California

2008	Summer Open House, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California

2008	Vernissage, MFA Graduation Exhibition, Herbst Pavillion, San Francisco, California

2008	Fastrak: Train and Tunnel Survey, Lobot Gallery, Oakland, California

2006	Artist Book Contest Winners, Anne Bremer Library, San Francisco, California

2006	Ladakh, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, California

	Top of Page

Collections

Andrew Pilara Collection, San Francisco, California

Paul Sack Collection, San Francisco, California

Top of Page

Education
	San Francisco Art Institute, MFA

Colette Campbell-Jones Statement

Artist Statement
The mine is profoundly mythical, associated with the primordial Unknown. Stories from Underground is a dark faerie-tale embodying fears of literally being consumed by the earth below (and its parallel, the ancient terror of being consumed by the archetypal carnivorous Forest lurking deep within our collective psyches) and the monstrous economic machinery above. The oral histories reveal the strange light of a people who have emerged from the mines’ conditions of incommensurable darkness, the Abyss. The story-tellers insist they are the last who are able to transmit the values and customs of their culture in which camaraderie, intense emotional bonds, coded humor, organizing labor, “watching and washing” each others backs—together coalesced all the valley villages into a single vibrant organism and became a vehicle of communal identity and transcendence. With the end of “deep shaft” mining in Wales, the story-tellers see their community-based culture rapidly becoming individualistic. Their “stories” foreshadow what lurks below the surface of our post-industrial/post-modern technologies and the world of global capital while also suggesting an alternative to the dominant historical narrative.

Process Statement
Stories from Underground evolved out of considering how imagery provides insight into the psychological mechanisms that filter and shape our sense of reality by omitting and embellishing experience. I construct images to mimic the psyche’s play between the objective/subjective, as in oral stories, through combining photographic documents with highly manipulated material. I make work prints from tens to hundreds of scanned negatives which are then cut up and made into a large scale paper collage. By recombining photographic fragments into new imagery, I am able to draw upon unconscious processes to make fresh connections between levels of meanings, forms, and ideas. Following from the paper collage, images are constructed inside the computer. They are printed to reference charcoal drawings (borrowing from the traditional association drawing has with fiction) while retaining a “purchase of the real” unique to the photograph.

Colette Campbell-Jones Books
Available from photo-eye