Joan Rosenstein

About the Artist

Joan Rosenstein received her B. S. in Painting from Skidmore College and her M.F.A. in Painting & Printmaking from The University of Michigan, where she held an Art Department Teaching Fellowship. Before joining the faculty at Montgomery College in 1967, she was Acting Head of the Education Department at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In later years, Rosenstein was a Fellow at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and received two Scholarly Activities Grants and a Sabbatical Grant from her employer, Montgomery College. In addition, she received four grants from the Arts Council of Montgomery County, and a grant from the Humanities Council of Montgomery County. In June 1997, upon her retirement from the Art Department, the Board of Trustees of Montgomery College granted her the status of Professor Emerita and awarded her the Bronze Medallion in recognition of her thirty years of distinguished service to the College. Joan Rosenstein exhibited painted relief sculptures and lithographs in the 1960's and 1970's. Changing media in 1983, she took up photography studying in the United States and Europe with Jerry Uelsmann, Sally Mann, George Krause, Ralph Gibson, Ted Orland, Martha Casanave, Edna Bullock, Les Krims, Jean-Pierre Cannelle, Cole Weston, Susan Mieseles, Jeff Dunas, Connie Imboden, and Rafael Navarro. Rosenstein's work has been published and exhibited nationally in over 170 group shows and 19 solo exhibitions. Her work is included in private collections throughout the United States as well as in Arles and in Paris, France, in Sydney, Australia, in Jerusalem, Israel and Las Posas, Mexico. Public collections include the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, The Phillip Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Collegeville, Pennsylvania, West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania, Montgomery County Permanent Collection, Montgomery County, Maryland, Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jersualem, Knights Hospitaller, Atlanta, Georgia, Montgomery College Permanent Collection, Rockville, Maryland, Berg Color Tone Company, Lancaster, New York and numerous corporate collections in the United States.

Artist's Statement

These photographs continue my explorations of the landscape by focusing on the natural wonders of some of the oldest and most majestic Southern Live Oaks found in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, North & South Carolina, and Florida. I’ve taken hundreds of photographs from which I’ve selected images to use as the basis of a series of abstract color photographs investigating interactions of natural elements which I’ve manipulated in space in the computer. In synthesizing these oak tree photographs, I’ve created complex images revealing a colorful mosaic of visually contradicting, enigmatic spaces. My goal is to encourage the viewer to enter the new multi-layered, kaleidoscopic, magical, mystical, imaginary universe I’ve created using the vital rhythms, patterns, colors, and forms of the monumental live oak trees.