Dana Hart-Stone
As a young child, Hart-Stone wandered the vast, history-rich countryside of Eastern Montana. His discoveries of deserted homesteads strewn with evidence of fragmentary narratives of back-breaking lives eked out in the grueling Badlands ignited his curiosity and wonderment for lost histories of the American experience.
These early mysteries are the fuel that informs his work today. Finding the same curiosity in peacemeal stories evident in the vintage, vernacular, American photographs he digitally stitches together, Hart-Stone explores the breadth and depth of our country's Western development.
By bringing into service technologies that span two hundred years, he investigates the truth-for-an-instant subject matter of late 19th century photographs and 20th century snapshots. His digitally manipulated appropriation of artless, unnewsworthy images of a country in perpetual development are the fodder he uses to create dynamic compositions of filmic, image repeat stripes and kaleidoscopic tondos that remind us of the days when Busby Berkeley's bird's eye choreography dazzled movie goers. Unlike the romanticized, stereotyped, and often racist "Western" movies, Hart-Stone's work reveals layers of content celebrating the unromantic lives of ordinary Americans.
Submitted by Gilman Contemporary
