Mary Farmilant
Mary Farmilant (American) a Chicago-based artist, earned a BA with Honors and an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Her ongoing work examines the progressive deterioration of abandoned institutional spaces and the human presence that remains. Farmilant’s images are an outgrowth of her background in nursing and her interest in addressing the issues we face today: the current crisis in healthcare, preservation of history versus building anew, the allocation of resources in the community, and the pressure on the middle class. The examination of objects and the spaces they occupy is a predominant theme of her work. She seeks out the mundane and unnoticed in everyday life. Her work explores the liminal state that relates to perception, memory, and narrative. Farmilant is a founding member of the artist collective Standard Usage Project. The collective is a group of Chicago-based artists whose first collaborative endeavor, In-Between: Emotional Branding for Photography sought to expand the boundaries of the photographic image to emotionally engage the in-between space and activate the artwork and its environment through the senses. She has been the recipient of several grants and awards; including the 2007 Illinois Artists Fellowship Award, the Follett Fellowship, the Albert P. Weisman Memorial Scholarship, the Stuart & Iris Baum Project Completion Grant and first prize in the 2005 Golden Light Awards Print Competition. Farmilant is also a finalist in the Photolucida’s 2008 Critical Mass. She recently completed a Summer Residency at Columbia College Book & Paper Center and has also been awarded a third artist residency at the Ragdale Foundation in 2009. Her work has been published in the Photography Quarterly’s, ‘Photography Now’ 2006 and Columbia College Chicago’s 6x6 Book Series, Mementos. She teaches photography at Columbia College Chicago. Farmilant has exhibited nationally and has work in several collections through the US. She currently teaches as an adjunct professor at Columbia College Chicago.