NAME: Alisha Wormsley
BIRTH PLACE:
BIRTH DATE: 6.27.78
BIOGRAPHY
Over the past ten years, I have worked diversely through the medium of photography. It is empowering to grow into a skilled technician, but there are some things I cannot express with one medium alone. As a commercial photographer of others’ art forms, including music, dance, theater and film, the utility of commercial work has compromised the sense of completion and connection I experience through my own artwork. It can be exhausting to work with the primary goal of communicating someone else’s idea. Photomontage is, for me, a retelling – through it, I can deconstruct the ‘real’ image and adapt it to a conceptual image.
I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and was significantly influenced by the cultural arts context of my environment. I was exposed to the work of Romare Bearden throughout my youth, but the significant influence of his art was not made manifest in my own work until a trip to Cuba in 2001. While in Cuba, I was also impressed by the influence Russian poster montage art had on Cuban art. Upon my return to the United States, I started to experiment in photo montage, working to create one photograph with several pieces of different photographs.
