Description:

Brittney Denham-Whisonant is a multidisciplinary artist, born in California and raised in Wyoming. She earned an MFA at The Ohio State University in 2012. Currently she is Assistant Professor of Photography and Printmaking, as well as Gallery Director of Edward Whitney Gallery at Sheridan College in Wyoming.

Denham-Whisonant has a background in traditional photography and printmaking but has allowed her research and affinity for process to stretch into other areas such as textiles, natural dyeing, and installation. After moving to a small town in Wyoming, she learned how to quilt by hauling a 1950s Singer Featherweight into the local in-home quilt shop every day for a summer. It was here that a group of women passed down multi-generational knowledge, and they even threw in a seam ripper.

After the birth of her first child, the complexities of motherhood such as: body as home, the passing of traditions, navigating all-nighters, growth charts, and feeding schedules, all while trying to reconcile a dichotomy of being a mother and artist shifted her practice. Embracing a more nontoxic and holistic approach became a focus to include her son and create a more flexible art making that utilized garden hose cyanotypes and kitchen stovetop dyeing.

She primarily focuses her work on motherhood identity, body as environment, domestic labor, traditions/history of women’s work, and the dissections of maternal material. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including most recently in American Memory, at UCROSS Gallery at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming.