Joan Fitzsimmons: Into What World?
JUNE 20 — AUGUST 31, 2025
Into What World? is a solo exhibition by Joan Fitzsimmons and a personal investigation into landscape as a place of dreams and imagination. It consists of selections from three of her photographic series called The Woods, Blue Moon, and Plant Life.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have walked as long as I can remember. My Father would gather me, and my siblings, and we would walk for miles. We would walk to our grandparents' home. In summers, we walked here, in the Michigan woods, in search of evidence of past histories. When I walk, I dream. I don't start with that intent. I just want to move, but my mind moves with my body. It moves in time to places of memory and imagination.
My early landscape work began with a walk in the woods, a place for me, of both fear and fantasy. Some of the fantasy was Disneyesque, some took a dark turn. The Woods, my resulting series, was inspired by my experience of frequently being lost therein. It invited new formal challenges. In an attempt to create a sense of the dense environment, I broke from the traditional small photographic rectangle, choosing to respond to the vastness of the woods with the use of scale. Hand-made photograms speak to imagined creatures, The lines created by the spare branches resemble the flow of gesture drawings. Their intricate weaving constructs a tightly knit interior space.
Thoughts turned from the earth to the sky in the Blue Moon series. I never knew what a blue moon was. I loved the song. I knew the phrase, “Once in a blue moon”. A few years ago, a blue moon occurred, a fairly rare occurrence, two full moons in one month. The media gave a full explanation. I realized the photograms I was making, of simple bowls of yogurt, looked like moons. They could be blue moons. Each image is a uniquely hand-toned.
Plant Life is a still-life documentation of my attempts at gardening. Some years ago, I began photographing my ongoing efforts to grow things. Having little horticultural ability, I primarily recorded my failures. During Covid, I read an article about generating scallions from cuttings. I returned to this series with a limited degree of success. I would be an urban farmer. My attention drifted. I needed to move my teaching online and the plants were neglected. Whether the plants thrive or not, the photographs survive and hold their own enigma.
The natural world is a starting point for constructions of the mind.
-Joan Fitzsimmons
ARIST BIO
Joan Fitzsimmons is a practicing photographer who has explored varying iterations of the photographic image. She has traveled to Poland on a grants from Artslink, and The Kittredge Fund in preparation for her series, The Woods, a personal reflection on landscape, for her, a place of both fear and fantasy. While in Warsaw she also performed in a trilogy of videos by the Polish artist Jacek Malinowski. Fitzsimmons was invited by Zacheta Gallery, the National Gallery of Poland to attend the opening reception of Malinowski’s solo exhibition, which included the HalfAWoman Trilogy. While there she participated in a Curator’s guided talk, and also conducted a workshop, In Response to Place, for young artists.
Fitzsimmons has exhibited globally and online. Her work is in the collection of The Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA), The Brooklyn Museum of Art (Brooklyn, NY), The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Additionally, her work is included in the Pierogi Flat Files. Fitzsimmons has exhibited in notable group exhibitions such as Our Bodies Ourselves at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art (New Haven, CT), Dogs at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), Light from Illumination to Pure Radiance (SF MoMA), and more. Fitzsimmons had a solo exhibition entitled Plant Life at the Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA).
Fitzsimmons is a Professor in the Department of Art, Architecture + Design at Norwalk Community College (Norwalk, CT) where she oversees the area of photography.
MFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL
BFA, Washington University School of Art, St. Louis, MO
Learn more about Joan Fitzsimmons at www.joanfitzsimmons.com.
Image: Joan Fitzsimmons, The Woods.07-2. 2002-25, Gelatin silver print. 48 x 48 in. Detail.
