“I question why we do what we do, especially when it harms the environment and ourselves. Why are we not as thoughtful as we should be with our habits? Why do we pollute the air and land when we need to both to survive? Why do we destroy nature when we turn to it for peace, refuge, and joy?”
Christine Carr grew up in Virginia and received her MFA from the Tyler School of Art, her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and her AAS from the Tidewater Community College Visual Arts Center. She uses digital and film photography to explore the human existence in and impact on the environment. Her work is rooted in issues of pollution and climate change with a focus on the ephemeral nature of airborne particles and the evocative nature of light.
Carr is a recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship and the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Grant at Iowa State University. Her work is included in the 5th edition of Exploring Color Photography, the 3rd edition of Photographic Possibilities and the 2nd edition of Light and Lens, all by Robert Hirsch. She has exhibited in solo shows in Virginia, Texas, California, Washington, DC, and in numerous group shows throughout the United States and internationally. In 2017 she participated in the Jentel artist residency in Wyoming to photograph and edit In the Air. In 2018 she undertook an artist residency at Iowa Lakeside Lab, where she photographed, shot video and took a class to learn about high quality audio recording in anticipation of a future video/sound project. She has taught photography as an Assistant Professor at both Iowa State University and Hollins University and has worked as the Membership and Program Manager at the Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran.
During her North Street Residency, Christine will continue work on her recent project entitled, “In the Air,” which spans the United States and includes photographs of airborne participles including smoke, smog, and dust from sources such as transportation, celebration, and energy production. She will expand on those ideas and working methods through experimentation and will spend time scouting for opportunities to photograph and to record video and sound, making her work unique to Willits’ history, geography, industry, and landscape.
