PHOTOGRAPHER'S STATEMENT

Penni Webb - Penni Webb Designs

As a little girl I traveled all the time, my father was in the military. We were either overseas or on the road; and I would be in the backseat of the car with my brothers, viewing landscape, license plates and the Thunderbird, my favorite car. This started my trek of traveling on the road and taking pictures of towns, aging buildings & historical objects. I started to look at hand painted postcards and decided that the images that I saw would look interesting hand painted. I also was inspired by americano kitsch. In the 80's, I was hired to be photographer at Western Scenic Studios, an Oakland event & film commercial company that had been around for 100 years. Charlie Chaplin hired this company to paint his backdrop scenery for his movies. I was a painter/printer maker who suddenly worked with the camera and loved it. I wanted to get better at shooting pictures and worked with master photographer Bill Davis who had been an assistant to Eliot Porter. Each year I would take a workshop with a master photographer, mainly Phil Borges and Tewfic ElSawy who helped me gain confidence and develop a travel portfolio, World and US based.

The Beauty of Aging photographs were taken on my travels during the last twenty years. I have exhibited my work in the Bay Area; Aspen, Colorado; Taos, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona. I received my Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Arizona and worked on my Master's degree in Printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. Between 1995 and 1998, I was supported by an art patron to create etchings and monotypes at the Kala Institute in Berkeley. My work has traveled to museums and art centers in Colorado and Arizona supported by the Western Commission for the Arts. In 1999, I was artist in residence at Magnolia Editions in Oakland where I worked with a master printer on lithographs from my photographs.

My work can be found in the collections of Crocker Bank in Los Angeles; Blanc & Otus PR; Field Paoli Architects in San Francisco; and Seadden, Arp & Slate Advertising in New York as well as several private collections. Here is a list of selected exhibitions where my work has been shown:

2008  Smith Andersen North, San Rafael, CA Solo Show
          Falkirk Center, San Rafael, Juried Show
2007  SFMOMA Artist Gallery, Summer group show, San Francisco
2006  Alternative Techniques in Photography, Marin Civic Center SR
          SFMOMA Artist Gallery
2005  Creative Center for Photography, Tucson, Az
2005-1992  SFMOMA Artist's Gallery
2002  Sonoma Museum of Visual Arts
2001  Laguna Art Museum
1999  Taos Fall Arts Invitational
1998  Banacker Gallery
1997  Olga Dollar Gallery
1996  Artifacts Gallery
1995  Allport Gallery
1996  Kala Institute
1995  Harlan & Allen Gallery

Currently I have a business in Marin County as an Interior Designer, Photographer and Organizer for homes, small businesses and offices. I also work as a part time as a furniture stylist for Macy's and teach hand-painted photography at the Redwood Community College in Larkspur. The Beauty of Aging series has been placed in major private collections in the US. My work can be seen on my two websites:
www.penniwebbdesign.com
www.thebeautyofaging.com

 

©The Beauty of Aging. Penni Webb/Penni Webb Designs/ 415-717-8299/ pwebbdesign@prodigy.net

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