Collections Database

Label Text:
McKenna grew up on an active volcano in Hawaii, wondering when the ground beneath her feet would erupt. She now interprets nature as a series of potential dramas about to unfold. In her series Web Studies, McKenna makes photograms of the dazzling micro-ecosystem of orb-weaver spiders, placing webs on light-sensitive paper and then exposing that paper to light. McKenna’s photograms contemplate the fragility of her relationship to the webs, which the spiders commonly build at night and destroy every morning. McKenna is fascinated by the short-lived dramas found in nature, saying, “If you really consider our relationship to landscape you have to recognize how fleeting and unstable everything is.”
Julia Gill, Class of 2020

Tags:
nature; documentary photography; light; geometry; lines

Subjects:
Nature; Documentary photography; Geometric patterns; Light; lines (artistic concept); Photographic gelatin

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2016.32

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.