presents

"Floral Portraits"
featuring new work by Jennifer Bong

Opening Saturday June 14th, 2008

Maiden Rock, Wisconsin

Swan Song Contemporary Arts presents the third special exhibition of its 2008 season in Floral Portraits, featuring new and recent works by Minneapolis-based photographer Jennifer Bong. On view through July 13, the exhibition opens with a reception for the artist on Saturday June 14 from 3:00-5:00P.M. Gallery hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10:00-5:00P.M.

Floral Portraits presents two bodies of work by Jennifer Bong, who has employed a 4”x5” camera for many years and is known for ethereal, large format, toned and tinted still lifes of flowers. Her Floral Series features 16” x 20” portraits of flowers grown in her Minneapolis garden, as well as the gardens of her friends. Jennifer acknowledges her subjects as sentient beings who, like human beings, have traveled through time and space on Earth; her photographs reflecting a precise moment of that life lived. She describes her creative process as a meditation and has long tempered her monochromatic sepia toned images with subtle, often translucent, hand tinting to create images of a timeless and poetic sensibility.

Jennifer presents her most recent work in the Passage of Time Series, a group of photographs created since her father’s death in 2006. Here, she offers images about memory in layered, even fractured, compositions filled with dried flowers, dusty mirrors and the personal effects of both parents. In these elusive photographs Jennifer plays softness, filtered light and reflection against various edges, evoking the shifting perceptual realities of longing and loss. Through this work she questions what is “real” and engages a variety of mystical possibilities: What color is the past? Are the souls of the flower and the mirror the same? Does the mirror remember the faces that it reflects? (These questions, among others, accompany the photographs in poetic text set for the gallery wall by the artist).  Her works answer in a multitude of mysterious ways. For Jennifer they are alchemically charged, having served as a crucible for the transformation of her grief into lasting images of love, light and beauty.

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Swan Song Contemporary Arts is an ecoarts gallery on the Mississippi flyway presenting an ongoing schedule of exhibitions of contemporary art related to our appreciation for and relationship to the planet Earth. Swan Song also houses a gift shop featuring multiples, collectables and original art by 29 artists of regional and national and international reputation. The gallery is founded and directed by artist Cynde Randall who also serves as artistic director of the Minneapolis based non-profit called Bird x Bird (www.birdxbird.org), an artist collective devoted to the stewardship of avian species and the ecoliteracy of human beings. Randall is also known for her work at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts where she was involved, for more than two decades, with the production and presentation of exhibitions of contemporary art in a museum context. As a retail gallery Swan Song actively promotes BxB’s mission and commits a percentage of its profits to projects devoted to the protection or restoration of wildlife habitat along the Mississippi flyway.

Swan Song Contemporary Arts is located on the Great River Road, the east side of Lake Pepin, in Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, just 1 hour southeast of the Twin Cities. Gallery hours are Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sundays from 9:00-5:00. Swan Song exhibits will run for 5 weeks from March through December. For more information call Swan Song gallery director Cynde Randall at (612) 250-9222 or email at cynderandall@hotmail.com.