With photographs, video, lightbox dioramas, and installation, this multi-disciplinary exhibition is an exploration into evidence and contradiction: beings and bodies, discarded histories, what survives, has worth, and needs recognition.
Inspired by a found set of Kodachrome stereo slides blasting colors from a 50s family and their luxurious travels around the globe, with taffeta, furs, daughters, weddings, parties. And Glass Lantern Slides from 1905, of hunters and their kill by ‘Travelogue’ creator, Burton Holmes. Image, video, and sculptural matter are meant to evoke dissonance and twist meaning; the use of collected material transformed into symbols and signals of the individual and the body. Abandoned archives call into question what endures, complexity of survival, invisible cruelties, sources of worth, and the inertia of status quo.
above: Seal, Lake Michigan, 2025; Beaver in Meadow, 2024; from the series Returned
below: Locker, 2024, (Beaver, Seal, Mink, Rabbit, Raccoon, and Fox fur; wire; Elk form, Elk fur)
MARROW / GRAIN at LIGHTFORMS in Hudson, NY
Photograms, Photographs, Video, Installation, and Sound Performances
by Colleen Plumb and Ruth Plumb
LIGHTFORMS ART CENTER
743 Columbia Street
Hudson, New York
October 9–November 1, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, October 11, 5-9pm, with a sound performance by Ruth Plumb at 7pm
An exhibition by mother and daughter, Colleen Plumb and Ruth Plumb, which endeavors to recognize the invisible forces and elements of the Earth. Through tree, rock, waters, and fire, they listen and pay attention to the more-than-human beings that entangle and connect us at this moment in time. In distant and close conversation, Colleen and Ruth acknowledge time scales beyond human perception and the experiences of natural forces that teach us to live in close connection to the Earth. Visitors to the space will walk through a video projection of fire on glass front window, step among sand grain-ribs sculpted across the floor, view color and b&w photographic prints in surround, pass corners with branch-forests pressed dense, and step up to video of moving water. Conversation with the artists on October 19, 4-6pm // Closing reception on October 30, 2-6pm
top: Colleen Plumb, Untitled (Dark Reds and Yellow), 2022, Chromogenic print (photogram); Ruth Plumb, Sand Spine, 2024, Watercolor;
installation views: peeled and charred sycamore branches, burned sycamore joints, framed photograms, video on glass, Colleen Plumb. Video projection and sand installation in back space by Ruth Plumb.
Papermaking at AWAGAMI FACTORY in Japan
I went to Japan in late summer to attend the 41st Annual Papermaking Workshop at the Awagami Paper Factory in Awa on the island of Shikoku. The intensive papermaking workshop also included Japanese bookbinding, orizome dyeing, and traditional indigo dyeing—learning from masters alongside artists from around the globe. I spent a few weeks also traveling, photographing and making video in many locations in Japan.
Photo by Sandra Bornemann
The SUPERNATURAL
21c Cincinnati
September 2023 - August 2024
Curated by Alice Gray Stites, Museum Director, Chief Curator
Happy to have work in this incredible show alongside artists: Albano Afonso, Edward Burtynsky, Elena Dorfman, Richard Mosse, Patricia Piccinini, Anthony Goicolea, Kate Clark, and many more.
Read about the exhibition HERE
Holding Rhythm (still), 2022, HD Video, 12:22 min
Prized, a new short video screened in Portland
Bring to Mind, curated by Rankin Renwick
An evening of sound and film exploring humans, otherness, ecology and landscape. Artist Rankin Renwick will present Mind Fetch, a curation of four short films which speak to human animal/animal borders. The films are by Colleen Plumb, Rebecca Barten, Carolina Charry Quintero and Rankin Renwick.
September 28th at Skyline Tav Project, Portland, Oregon
stills from: Prized, 2024, 4:30 min, HD video, sound
Openlands Treekeeper spotlight
I was interviewed by Tom Ebling, Senior Forestry Program Manager at OPENLANDS about my project, Marrow: Rendering Sycamore. It was an honor to have my work about Chicago Sycamore trees highlighted by Openlands—an organization doing such important local land conservation and preservation work.
From the interview: “Colleen’s story underscores the spirit of re-envisioning the type of connection we want to foster at Openlands. We are grateful to showcase local voices that are illuminating paths towards deeper relationships with our urban forest here in Chicago.” Photograms (unique chromogenic and silver gelatin prints) will be on view at Lightforms Art Center in Hudson, NY, Oct. 9-31.
STAPLE AND STITCH ART BOOK FAIR
Showing my published and handmade artist books
November 15–17 at 21c
55 E Ontario Street, Chicago
Animals Are Outside Today (Radius Books, 2011), Thirty Times a Minute (Radius Books, 2020), Marrow (artist book/maquette, 2024), Coiled (maquette, 2023), How the Sky and Water Attach at the End of the Sea (maquette, 2022)
Illinois Arts Council Agency
Recipient of 2023 Artists Fellowship
Media Arts
21c Chicago site specific video installation, Holding Rhythm, on view through Oct. 2023
Lecturer, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Panelist: Art and Animals / Living With Animals Conference
Eastern Kentucky University hosts the fifth biennial “Living with Animals” conference March 9-11, 2023
The theme, Habitat and Home, reflects our dual concerns that accompany the ongoing dev- astation of landscapes across the globe: first, that these landscapes are homes and habitats shared by humans and nonhumans alike; and second, that this crisis shared among species calls for an attempt to forge a connection be- tween the emotional appeal of “home” with the scientific language of “habitat.” In addition, so many of us have animals (wanted and unwanted) in our homes that the human home has become their habitat, or at least a significant part of it.
Linnea Ryshke, Lee Deigaard and Colleen Plumb
Panelists, on the theme: Belongings
Joan flasch artists’ Book collection
Thirty Times a Minute was acquired by the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection. The collection brings together over twelve thousand artists’ publications in all formats and media including: books, zines, multiples, video, and audio recordings, digital works, periodicals, and other unique works of art created by artists of local, national, and international significance. Focusing on materials published from the 1960s to the present, it is complemented by collections of reference works and exhibition catalogues to support in-depth research on artists’ publishing.
Got Punctum? Podcast Interview
With J. Sybylla Smith
Listen to the podcast conversation HERE
You’ll find other recordings of talks about photo books with the many artists featured, and in-depth information about each interview at J. Sybylla Smith.com
Paris Photo 2022 + Radius Books
Neena (Baraboo, WI) at Rue du Faubourg Poissonniére, Paris, France
Thirty Times a Minute Book Signing
I will be heading to Paris Photo for a book signing at the Radius Books booth on:
Friday, November 11 at 2pm, Booth SE5
Grand Palais Éphémère Paris, France
Holding Rhythm, at 21c Chicago
Site-Specific Video Projection
21c Chicago
55 East Ontario Street
On view October 2022 - October 2023
Holding Rhythm (12:22 min, color video, loop, sound)
Video projection is viewable dusk-midnight from the interior-facing windows of 21c Chicago. Holding Rhythm is a new experimental video that weaves together vast landscapes with captive animals. It looks at the contradiction of keeping wild animals in captivity, raises questions about what it means to participate as a spectator, and acknowledges nature’s capacity to calm or soothe. How can paying attention to forces and rhythms of our natural world be a guide toward symbiosis, and contribute to pathways toward remedy?
Join me and 21c Museum Manager, Juli Lowe, for a private viewing of the projection February 26, 2023. More viewings announced monthly.
Orion Magazine: Invisible Visible
A collaborative work featured in Orion Magazine acknowledging the many hidden lives involved in factory farming. Plaster cast sculptures, installation, photographs, and video by Colleen Plumb with writings by Katherine Kassouf Cummings.
Paws Sanctuary International Conference
PAWS Sanctuary International Conference:
Thirty Times a Minute book signing in Sacramento, California
Read about the Sanctuary HERE
Nonhuman Rights Project
Nonhuman Rights Project fundraising campaign:
Thirty Times a Minute was recently used to help the legal campaign for Happy the Elephant at the Bronx Zoo.
Read about the historic legal fight HERE
Adopted Landscapes at Collective 62 in Miami
Tembo (Topeka, KS) at George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY, 2017
Exhibition curated by Dina Mitrani and Marina Font
On view through November 15, 2022
Collective 62
901 NW 62nd Street, Miami
Surveilling Snow Lily highlighted as "Must See" in ARTFORUM
Surveilling Snow Lily
Roman Susan Art Foundation
1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago IL
February 1, 2021 - February 28, 2021
Natural Transcendence at Oolite Arts, Miami
June 16 - November 7, 2021
Adler Guerrier
Megan McLarney
Colleen Plumb
Anastasia Samoylova
Jennifer Steinkamp
Wendy Wischer
Antonia Wright
Curated by Rhonda Mitrani
Oolite Arts
928 Lincoln Road, Miami, FL
ecoartpace exhibition and book: Embodied Forest
Embodied Forest
ecoartspace, Patricia Watts, Founder
To understand our place within nature as part of the whole is an eminently social and existential matter. The environmental crisis and the frequency of natural disasters we have experienced last decades, indicates the urgency for a different logic of conceiving, interacting and projecting the natural world. The artistic community and its ability to expand the social mind have an essential role in creating a new value system concerning the environment, which breaks through modern anthropocentrism and the antagonism between nature and culture.
Coexisting, interacting and exchanging energy with other organisms and natural phenomena is the basis for developing the artistic works presented in Embodied Forest. From the sensitive to the rational, these works contain an effervescence of processes, poetic materials and techniques that reframe Forest in a set of plural languages. These cultural processes unfold nature by using knowledge and poetic freedom to help understand ecology in the Anthropocene and generate new sensibilities to an ethical relation to nature.
curated by Lilian Fraiji
Thirty Times a Minute, Published by Radius Books, Now available
Order Thirty Times a Minute: Radius Books
Thirty Times a Minute / News:
Lens Culture 2020 Favorite Books, Lisa Hostetler, Curator, George Eastman Museum
Thirty Times a Minute by Colleen Plumb. Published by Radius Books.
”This publication of Colleen Plumb’s profoundly moving artistic investigation of elephants in captivity is both gorgeous and heartbreaking. Plumb has been making videos of caged elephants rhythmically swaying, roughly in time with their heart rate, which gives the book its title. The creatures are exhibiting what is called ‘stereotypical behavior’—a consequence of being forced to suppress their natural instinct to roam over fifty miles a day. To raise awareness of the elephants’ plight, Plumb travels the country projecting her videos on urban streetscapes. She doesn’t announce the time or location of the screenings but readily engages any interested passersby in conversation about the elephants. The outsized scale of her projections belies the modesty of her approach but is matched elegantly in the publication. The thick volume includes transparent overlays, a folded insert, sumptuous reproductions, and a wide range of essays that consider her work from a wide range of scientific and cultural perspectives. It’s a monumental achievement to which I find myself returning often during my pandemic-induced confinement.”
—Lisa Hostetler, PhD, Curator in Charge, Dept. of Photography, George Eastman Museum
NPR Interview Live, on Wednesday, December 5, 9:10 am CST on show: "Talking Animals with Duncan Strauss"
Radio Interview with Laurent Levy on The Other Animals, WWDBAM Philadelphia, September 25, 2020
Book review by Radhika Subramaniam in Minding Nature Journal, Fall 2020, Vol 13, No. 3
EcoLit Books: Best Environmental Books We've Read in 2020
Colleen Plumb’s Thirty Times a Minute is a book that speaks to our hearts through the power of images. The volume offers reader/viewers an immersive experience featuring photographs from Plumb’s projections of captive elephants around the world and essays reflecting on the life of captive elephants by Linda Hogan, Hope Ferdowsian, Joyce Poole & Peter Granli, Steven M. Wise, and others. Gorgeous, provocative, unique, and thoughtful, the images and elephants in this book yield new insights with each opening. —John Yunker
Interview with Mark Molloy on New Books Network
Conversation with Nonhuman Rights Project Director of Government Relations, Courtney Fern, about a vision of a world where all elephants live freely and how both art and legal advocacy can help change a status quo that unjustly sees elephants as “things” with no rights.
September 22, 2020
Photography + ________ Collabortions at Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago
Invisible Visible, a collaborative work acknowledging the many hidden lives involved in factory farming, by Katherine Kassouf Cummings and Colleen Plumb. A multi-disciplinary project including sculpture and video installation, photography, and writings, created as an act of acknowledgement for the many lives involved in factory farming: the chickens and the workers, together subjected to the suffering created by our industrial food system.
Edelman Gallery
1637 W. Chicago Avenue
July 10-Sept. 4, 2020
Solo Exhibition: Colleen Plumb / Thirty Times a Minute at McCormick Gallery
February 28, 5-7pm
McCormick Gallery
835 West Washington Blvd., Chicago