Anna Norton

Artist Biography
Anna Norton received her M.F.A. in photography from Tyler School of Art and her B.A. in anthropology from Tulane University. After beginning her career in archaeology, she attended the Maine Photographic Workshops six-month Resident Program to focus on her interest in photography. Currently she teaches as part-time professor at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, where she works as black and white, color and digital lab technician as well. She also is the Assistant Visual Resources Curator at Tyler School of Art. She exhibits in group and solo exhibitions both regionally and nationally. These include About Love at Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York and a solo exhibition at Off-White Walls at Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. A selection of Norton’s work will be published in Elements of Photography by Angela L. Faris-Belt in 2008. While continuing her still photography, she is additionally working on a series of videos called Living Space to be installed this coming spring at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.

Artist Statement
As a child I used to explore the wooded area around our house. Usually I could find something of note, something that I had never come across before, or something that had changed since my last excursion. Often I was drawn to the creek, but one particular day I remember.

It must have been hot, probably summer, likely midday. These are things that I don’t remember, and can only reason. What I do remember is the ground immediately surrounding the place I stood, the water running across it following the path of the water that went before, and continuing. The water must have felt cool on my feet. I can imagine that feeling, especially today in the heat and still air of my house. I can reason the heat of the air, so then the coolness of the water, but I can still see that water. On another day, I might not be so apt to imagine the liquid relief and its soothing brush against me, and I might not care whether it was a summer day or perhaps early in autumn. Every time that memory comes back to me, though, I see the water. I see the light reflected back from surface breaks of shallow pebbles. Rocks, sand, water and light all came together in layers of texture where I happened to stand and notice, but that’s not really important. What is important is that I happened to stand there, not in that place, but in any place, and notice.

The creek that ran through my childhood backyard isn’t on a map, nor does it even have a local name. These days it hardly ever even appears; it has almost entirely dried up. After a substantial rain it will occasionally spring to life again, as if retracing its steps. For many years when I would return home to visit, I would wander down to the creek again, retracing my own steps, hoping to find something that would catch my eye, pretending that it would be by chance. Now, the line of the creek bed that once brought new water only marks the boundary of the back yard, and life moves more quickly, so I do not wander down there anymore.

Still, not too far from my home now is a creek.
http://www.annagnorton.com/