BEV CONWAY

As a child I had two major interests: history and art. To my parents art seemed an impractical career path so after college I taught social studies for 21 years in New Hampshire high schools.

At midlife I decided to follow my first passion—art. While working on my MFA at Lesley University in Boston, I worked part time at the Photographic Service Department of the University of New Hampshire. The department provided images for all university publications and photographic support for faculty and students.

Some of my mentors while at Lesley were Deborah Luster, Jessica Ferguson and John Coffer. The latter was particularly influential and I made numerous trips to his home in upstate New York to study wet plate collodion—a process used during the American Civil War.

In 2006 I was hired as full-time photography faculty at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH. During my 17-years of teaching there, I continued to seek opportunities to grow as an artist. In addition to many conferences and workshops, I continued to study wet plate collodion with John Coffer as well as with Mark and Francis Osterman and Luther Gurlach. Additionally, I studied albumen printing with both Zoe Zimmerman and Mike Robinson.

In 2014, I received a sabbatical and spent the fall semester creating a series of wet plate images of antique tools. These images and others have been shown in a wide variety of exhibitions and venues, among them: University of Northern Colorado Wet Plate Exhibition; “Documented: A Visual Narrative of an Artist’s Life,” at the Sharon Arts Center Gallery in conjunction with the MacDowell Colony’s award to Nan Golden; alternative process exhibit curated by Christopher James at the Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, Colorado; “Myths,” a group show that traveled for 18 months through New England; “Going Forward, Looking Back–Practicing Historic Photographic Processes in the 21st Century,” a traveling show across New England; “f295 21st Century Photography” in Pittsburg, PA; “Sun Pixels to MegaPixels: Archaic Processes to Alternative Realities” in Brooklyn, NY; the Louisville Photography Biennial in Louisville, KY; “The Past is Present,” at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY and “Action/Reaction” at The Art Gallery at the University of New Hampshire.

In addition to these public showings, my work is also in numerous private collections and has been exhibited internationally. I have been a guest speaker and provided demonstrations of historic photographic processes at a variety of gatherings such as: the University of New Hampshire, the University of Southern Maine, the Photographic Historical Society of New England, the View Camera Conference and The New Hampshire Society of Photographic Artists.

My images have been included in the second and third editions of The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes by Christopher James and in Anthotypes–Explore the Dark Room in Your Garden and Make Photographs Using Plants by Malin Fabbri.

Monalog™ is supported by member dues and a portion of member print sales. All member prints are original and hand made, using various processes. Please contact member artists for further information.