Cate Wnek
We are just so very happy to feature Cate Wnek for February 2018 which is also our 2nd anniversary as a gallery. What a great couple of years it's been. We originally met Cate at the New England Portfolio reviews and immediately felt a connecton to her work. Cate, a photographic artist, works have been seen in exhibits at New England's own The Curated Fridge as well as Photoplace Gallery. She's recieved notable accolades from National Geographic Your Shot, Daily Dozen, Editor’s Pick as well as Top 100 Photographers to Watch in 2015, Clickin Moms.
Raising Goosebumps
I only recently became acquainted with Cate Wnek’s work, but it has stayed with me. Photographs and artist books are good companions, and that holds true when considering Cate’s larger body of work. The intimate nature of the photographs, and the connection to the natural world, are similarly reflected in the structure of her books. Each is an object that invites the viewer to glimpse a more private domestic realm.
One enters a particular space when photographing their children and an immense range of feeling is immediately apparent—as a viewer you cannot help but feel the connection between the artist and her subjects. There are both beauty and barriers in these images. One appreciates the calm yet curious pausing of a child hovering over icy water or the rippled reflection of a figure suspended in air, but at the same time an undercurrent of anxiety runs through each of these photographs. It is fitting that the series is titled “Raising Goosebumps.” You sense that each of these photographs are just one still from a longer narrative—we are only present to catch a flare in the darkness and the blur of a child, or the remnants of a handprint as it smears its way through the picture plane. In each image, we see a reaction—an activation of the stillness. The artist describes a need to process the “jagged journey of life and motherhood” in her work, and her subjects’ fast pace through childhood fills each image with urgency and immediacy.
- Jessica Roscio, Curator, Danforth Art
I look out, then look deeper within, and discover what I have always understood, but beneath the surface. Like delicate words in a rhyme, each image combines with the next to inform me, again and again. Iteratively, clarity is the gift, Raising Goosebumps.
Raising Goosebumps
Like a counterweight running parallel to the upheaval for all that I can’t control in life, the creative process rouses my curiosity and wonder. I’m forever in need of more ways of seeing and perceiving to navigate my foggy and uncertain surrounds. In my process, I can jump from the pictures into a world previously unimagined, escaping into realization. The vibrant frames pull me back to myself. I look out, then look deeper within, and discover what I have always understood, but beneath the surface. Like delicate words in a rhyme, each image combines with the next to inform me, again and again. Iteratively, clarity is the gift, Raising Goosebumps.
Cate Wnek
Bio
Cate Wnek is a photographer, writer, and book artist based in Maine. Her writing and pictures have been published in Lemonade & Lenses, Click, One-Twenty-Five Magazine, and DPI Magazine. She has completed two workshops with Cig Harvey at Maine Media Workshops as well as a semester of the Maine Media MFA program in Photography. Her work has been selected for exhibition by the Curated Fridge and PhotoPlace Gallery, as well as a daily dozen Editor’s pick on National Geographic Your Shot. She is a contributing photographer to Offset and Adobe Premium Stock. In 2015, she was named one of the Top 100 photographers to watch by Clicking Moms, and a Favorite Mom Photographer by mom.me. Born and raised in northern Virginia, she came to live in Maine for its mountains, oceans and love. Following a career on a global markets trading floor, she became hooked onto photography as a stay-at-home mother to two boys. She says, the creative process is the means by which she processes the jagged journey of life and motherhood - the wondrous beauty and aching impermanence.
Visit: Cate Wnek