Catherine Jansen

• Name — Catherine Jansen • Born — 14 December 1950 • Birthplace — New York City, New York, U.S. • Known for — Photography • Training — Cranbrook Academy of Art and Tyler School of Art and Architecture

In 1969 Jansen created the Soft Tea Set, a scaled to life, photographic, three-dimensional object using a formula of potassium ferrocyanide and citric acid, which she developed specifically for cloth material. Stitching the imaged fabric together and stuffing it, she was the first to use this photographic process in a sculptural format. Jansen’s innovations with this blue print formula culminated in the first use of photography to create a scaled to life room environment using cyanotype on cloth. The Blue Room is part of the permanent collection at the Michener Museum of Art in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Jansen was the first artist to extensively explore the potential of the electronic color copier process using electronically generated images that preceded the digital camera and computer technology. Her first scaled to life room environment using this process was The Bathroom with Satin Sink and Taffeta Toilet. This installation is part of the permanent collection at the Honolulu Museum of Art Museum in Hawaii. This process using the color copier, the precursor to the digital age, evolved into the Soft House Project, a five-room scaled to life house environment, utilizing thousands of photographic images. While developing this protocol Jansen developed a method for photographing the figure full scale on cloth, as well as rendering three-dimensional objects on cloth. The life size portrait on cloth, Erika, is in the permanent collection at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. Between 1971-1976 Jansen was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant and two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants to complete a scaled to life five room house using color copier technology.

From the late 1990s to today, Jansen has been working with a digital camera and Adobe Photoshop to create a visual vocabulary that builds photographs into a long format that can express psychological and emotional time and space within the image. This work has coincided with 15 trips to India, and is an ongoing project called The Nada Series. Jansen presently lives in Wyncote, Pennsylvania and spends three and a half months out of every year in India. While there, she spends her time volunteering at Little Stars School for street children and orphans, as well as working on her Nada Series.

• 1970 - BFA Cranbrook Academy Of Art, Bloomsfield Hills, MI • 1972 - Certificate, Academia di Belli Arti, Rome, Italy • 1976 - MFA, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

• 2005 - Owen Patrick Gallery, Philadelphia, PA • 1999 - Fine Arts Museum, Melbourne, FL • 1998 - Owen Patrick Gallery, Philadelphia, PA • 1997 - Villanova University, Philadelphia, PA • 1995 - Michner Museum of Art, Doyelstown, PA • 1991 - The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ • 1990 - Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, OH • 1989 - Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA • 1989 - University of Virginia, Charlottesville, NC

• 2009 -10 Common Ground: Eight Philadelphia Photographers in the 1960s and 1970s, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA • 2009 -10 An Evolving Legacy, Twenty Years of Collecting, Michener ArtMuseum, Doylestown, PA • 2008 - Alternative Photography, Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA • 2006 - Hololulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI • 2004 - Alternative Photographic Processes, Boston, MA • 2001 - Imaging the Inner Eye, Allens Lane Art Center, Philadelphia, PA • 2000 - Imaging the Inner Eye, Allens Lane Art Center, Philadelphia, PA • 1998 - Woodmere Art Museum, Germantown, PA • 1998 - Photographic Alternatives, Hong Kong Art Center, Hong Kong • 1997 - Conspicuous Display, Rutgers University, Rutgers, NJ • 1996 - Bernice Steinbeckk Gallery, New York, NY