Meeting Hall Maine
Meeting Hall Maine records for posterity the documentation of hundreds of meeting halls found throughout the state. This photographic exploration began in collaboration with my late husband, Andrew S. Flamm (1967-2018). Our vision to adhere to centered compositions of frontal, side or back views and to sequence the typology of structures into grids and pairings invite comparison. At some sites three-quarter landscape views of the halls were created which set the structures in their context and their relationship to other buildings in the environment. The typologies mirror the clarity of a portrait, while the three-quarter perspectives evoke the experience of a particular place. Together these two formats offer the viewer a more complete photographic description that complements the creative aspect of the other. The project also includes work that appropriates signifiers used in ritual activities taking place inside the meeting halls.








































Material Culture
These prints are part of an evolving series that appropriates the material culture of American Fraternal Organizations as part of the boarder project: Meeting Hall Maine. For instance, heart and hand staffs are used by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows as teaching tools symbolizing, “That what ever the hand goes to do the heart must go with it”. The sun and the moon and “All Seeing Eye” frequently appear in fraternal imagery. The later represents the cyclical patterns found in nature. The eye represents an omnipresent power in the universe. The hammer striking the bell reflects that human life is finite.
















Album Series
Like nature itself, the repetition and proliferation of photographic imagery is used in this series to echo the rhythms of the natural world. My painted imagery or a found photograph have become the point of origin for exploring the permutation of color, pattern and texture that can emanate from a single image using layered combinations of historic photographic printmaking methods. Sequenced together into nonlinear compositions the prints express the repetition yet endless variation of time.
“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order”. ––– Jean-Luc Godard

















Found Photos
As a student of Ray Yoshida’s at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I learned early on that the importance of authorship is secondary to the emotional value of an object and that discovery often begins with the mundane process of wading and sifting through vast amounts of our material culture. Vernacular objects and images have enriched my artistic practice by broadening my own ideas of approaching, making, seeing and defining art.






