ArtFace: Shari Wilkins

Shari Wilkins, executive director, Cleveland Print Room, photographed by Herbert Ascherman, Jr.

Shari Wilkins, executive director, Cleveland Print Room, photographed by Herbert Ascherman, Jr.

 

 

Photographer, vintage photo collector, and Cleveland Print Room Executive Director Shari Wilkins has been inspired by Henry David Thoreau since someone handed her a copy of Walden when she was 12 years old. “He was a Transcendentalist who put emotion & intuition above reasoning,” Wilkins says. “Philosophically & spiritually, I connect with him. My work is my attempt to grasp the significance of our existence. Last spring at the Hidden Mother exhibition at CPR, my piece for the show was a memorial to my mother by proving her existence through my photographs of her personal effects (her actual ponytail, her false teeth, her wedding suit). I also search for evidence of our existence through my obsession with found photographs. The found photos are the evidence that we exist.” Which is a great reason to shoot with film, and make prints. At the Cleveland Print Room.