Catherine Panebianco
Catherine Panebianco is a visual artist whose work consistently catches hold of memories, dreams, and the spirts of those we currently love, and those that continue surround us from our past. Her work speaks to how we connect with others, with our past, and ourselves. Catherine received the 2020 LensCulture Critics Choice Top Ten Award, 2020 CENTER’s Project Launch Award and was a 2019 Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50 for her series, No Memory is Ever Alone. The series also won 1st place in the International Photography Awards for Fine Art, was a finalist for the National Photography Awards for the Texas Photographic Society & a San Francisco Bay International Photography Competition Portfolio Award. Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. and internationally.
Artist Statement
No Memory is Ever Alone is a visual conversation between me and my dad. He used to bring out a box of slides that he photographed in his late teens and early 20s every Christmas and made us view them on an old projector on our living room wall telling the same stories every year. It was a consistent memory from a childhood where we moved a lot and I never felt like I had a steady “place” to live and create memories.
I realized that by placing the slides in my current landscape, I created not only a connection between his life and mine, but a trail of memories, each that had its own association for both of us. A lot of these slides are of my mom, they were together almost 60 years. She passed away recently and I feel like her spirit, and all the spirits of the past, are around us. These little vignettes of family life in my current “space” comforts me that she and others are still near, watching over me. They create a “home” for me wherever I go.
I did not want to Photoshop that connection. Part of the process that was necessary for me was to find the right location and feel my dad’s slides united with how I live today – a place within a place, a memory within a memory.
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