Deck of Chords by Lauren Henkin & Kirsten Rian - SOLD OUT!

Artist Bio

Lauren Henkin Born in Washington, D.C. in 1974, award-winning, internationally shown photographer Lauren Henkin grew up in Maryland and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis. Although much of her photographic knowledge is self taught, Henkin has furthered her fine arts education by studying under photographers Chan Chao, Gordon Hutchings, Tyler Boley and George Tice.  She states, “The questions I am most concerned with when photographing are: What are the things that last?  What, if anything is permanent?  How are the things that we value or leave behind reflections of who we are?. A big part of what I do is provide a formal medium for valuing and studying informal subjects — to pay homage to things we see everyday; toys we leave on the floor, dresses hanging in a closet, or trees growing beside dumpsters. I tend to work from the inside out, using photography as a way to get to know myself better.  The satisfaction in all of this is seeing the progression from one body of work to another, a visual diary of my life, my worries, my fears, and hopes.” Henkin is a private educator, reviewer, Photolucida board member, author of three books, frequent speaker on marketing and bookmaking for fine art photographers, and active member in the photographic community.  In addition, she recently started Photo Radio, a blog presenting audio interviews with curators, gallerists, artists, publishers, educators and more.   Kirsten Rian Kirsten Rian’s writing has appeared in international literary journals and anthologies, including Daylight, Not A Muse; Rhino; and Upstreet; and was recently nominated for inclusion in the Best New Poets anthology. She teaches extensively in the Pacific Northwest, working with regional organizations like Multnomah County Library, Literary Arts as a poet-in-residence through the Writers in the Schools program, Saturday Academy, Fishtrap, and Portland State University. National foundations have sent her to locations such as post-war Sierra Leone to lead writing workshops using poetry as a tool for literacy and storytelling with former boy soldiers, young mothers kidnapped by rebel forces during the war, the amputee community, and village tribal elders. She has written with homeless communities in San Francisco, across the ocean in Finland at refugee relocation centers where she conducted poetry writing workshops with displaced women from 12 different countries. She was a poet-in-residence at Atkinson Elementary, a Spanish immersion school and worked with five different multi-language classes, resulting in 850 poems and a school anthology. She spent a summer teaching to low-literacy at-risk 7th graders through the I Have a Dream Foundation. She has held poetry workshops with relocated refugees stateside, working with ngos like The International Rescue Committee and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization. She has been an invited speaker at conferences such as the ORTESOL (Oregon Teachers of English as a Second Language) statewide event, speaking on the ties between literacy, language development, and poetry.  She is frequently a featured reader or lecturer and has appeared recently for Oregon Humanities, Portland Center Stage, and Friends of William Stafford. She co-authored the anthology, Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass (Urban Adventure Press), and is the author of  the recently published, Kalashnikov in the Sun (Pika Press) in early 2010. Also an independent curator and writer, she has coordinated more than 375 exhibitions, and served as picture editor or writer for 75 books and catalogues. She most recently curated the permanent exhibition for the new Mercy Corps international headquarters. She is a freelance writer.