Melissa Shook American, 1939-2020

By pairing personal ephemera, marked-up contact sheets, and completed prints, Melissa Shook: Freedom to Create maps thought, process, and product onto the interconnected roles of student, artist, and teacher, inviting visitors to trace their own through-lines of becoming. This exhibition highlights the unintentionally seeded experimentation that fuels an artist’s growth. As you move through, consider not only where you are going, but also: What do I need to create?

In the mid-1960s Shook, a single mother, began photographing her mixed-race infant daughter Kristina – “Krissy.” Krissy recalls she could think of no other way to have grown up with...

Featuring 31 images, the exhibition highlights American artist Melissa Shook’s early self-portraits, a pioneering project exploring intimate female identity in photography.