Michelle Westmark Wingard

Cyanotype on cotton fabric, seawater, 2022

Barges Beach, Cuttyhunk Island, MA.

Cyanotypes made using window frost as a photographic negative on rag paper

4-channel video installation, 2021-22

Filmed on the Atlantic (Cuttyhunk, MA), Gulf (Naples, FL), Pacific (Hammond, OR), and Superior (Grand Marais, MN) coasts. This space has been made for you, nothing in particular happens in these videos with the intention of making a place where you are invited to breathe deeply and let go of anything you’ve been carrying, even if only for a moment.

An interactive postcard project that included a prompt to write your future self a note in response to: “We have been navigating historically significant times & reframing ways of being in the world. As you move towards a new normal: What are you leaving behind? What are you bringing with you?”

Gallery visitors were invited to take a postcard, write a note to their future self, place it in the drop box. I mailed these postcards back to them several months later with a handmade cyanotype, intended as a gesture of care.

A series of 8 cyanotype prints connected by layered horizon lines that span the entirety of the work. These cyanotypes are made with a contact printer allowing UV light to pass through various layers of cut and drawn on Dura-Lar and the transparent vinyl I use in window installations. You can see the negatives that were used to make these prints suspended across the gallery.

This project embraces the intersectionality of parenting and artistic practice during unprecedented times. This simultaneous practice grew out of trying to find ways to entertain my youngest daughter while working in my studio.

I started making repetitive line drawings on the surface of cyanotypes prints as way of creating space for myself to process the intensity of everything that has happened over the last several years. These repetitive, ordered, intentionally imperfect lines are a meditation on perceptions of control and relinquishing control by giving my youngest daughter my test prints and allowing her to alter my work as she chooses.

The agency she brings to overlaying her own imagery on my work feels remarkably connected to the way we are currently doing life together – trying to proceed as if things are normal when they are anything but normal. I’m making these tiny, meticulous ordered lines and she’s responding to them with big, messy gestures of spontaneity.

We have been navigating historically significant times of amassed real and ambiguous losses. Even as pandemic restrictions lift, we are living within a new normal. This practice embraces the immediacy of what it means to make work from within an experience.

Cyanotype and pen on rag paper, 2021 - present

An ongoing practice of gratitude through handmade cards given to others.

These video works existed as both installations and a time-lapse videos. I’ve been extracting horizon lines from my photographs of Belgian landscapes, installing them on existing architecture and then making 4-hour time-lapse videos as the light changes.

On February 20, 1945, my grandfather’s plane – a B-24 called The Pale Ale - crashed in a farmer’s field near Dergneau, Belgium. Most of the crew was able to escape before the plane crashed with the exception of the pilot, nose gunner, and the navigator who perished in the crash explosion. As he told it, my grandfather was the last to bail out a few miles from the crash site. As luck would have it on this already ill-fated day, my grandfather’s parachute opened in time to save his life but not in time to save his leg. His leg was so badly broken that he found himself in a farmer’s field unable to move in Nazi occupied Belgium. Thankfully, a farmer - risking his own life - came out with a wheelbarrow and carried my grandfather back to his farmhouse (a location and an identity still unknown). My grandfather was taken to a hospital where he would fully recover, return home and start his family.

In 2016, I made a trip to the Belgian crash site and met with the town historian. We know my grandfather didn’t land with the plane because he survived. And so, while I was in Belgium I photographed fields within a 5-mile radius of the crash site. Belgium/ Minnesota exists as both an installation and a two-channel time-lapse video. I’ve been extracting horizon lines from my photographs of Belgian fields and installing them on windows over the existing horizon line. At some points during the day, the light outside matches the light in the photographed landscape and at some points the decal is backlit and appears as a redaction of the existing horizon. At any given point in the day, it is a study of contrasts: light/dark, real/imagined, manicured landscape/wild natural landscape, static/ever-changing. The stand-in horizons allow a visual dialog about landscape, longing and the passing of time to emerge.

The horizon appears as an unrequitable end point. Relative and yet intangible, it is a place that can never be reached. It is the optical illusion of something that exists only in theory. In researching the story of my grandfather’s plane crash during WWII, I found that each recounting of the story is different. Each story is shaped by individual perspective and the passage of time. The more I have learned about my grandfather’s story, the more subjective it has become. And so, in an effort to visually explore this idea, my project investigates landscapes and objects that embody a history that can no longer be physically seen and is in search of unknowable certainties.

On February 20, 1945, my grandfather’s plane–a B-24 called The Pale Ale–crashed in a farmer’s field near Dergneau, Belgium. Most of the crew was able to escape before the plane crashed. As luck would have it on this already ill-fated day, my grandfather’s parachute opened in time to save his life but not in time to save his leg. His leg was so badly broken in so many places that he found himself in a farmer’s field, unable to move, in Nazi occupied Belgium. Thankfully, the farmer–risking his own life–came out with a wheelbarrow and carried my grandfather back to his farmhouse. My grandfather was taken to a hospital where he would fully recover, return home, and start his family. As a child, I would often listen to my grandfather tell his epic tale of providence and survival. For him, it was a salvation story. And for me, it was the seemingly embellished memoir of a hero, with weighty consequences had my grandfather not survived.

Meanwhile, the significance for the people of Dergneau was a very different narrative. This crash coincided with the end of the occupation in Belgium. For the past several decades, a biennial memorial service there commemorates the Pale Ale Crew and celebrates the anniversary of The Liberation. A stone monument in Dergneau is etched with the names of the crew–including my grandfather’s name. An American flag that marks the crash site and, 71 years later, the earth still appears fuel-soaked and charred. The rusted remains of the plane are near by, covered in tarps to prevent further decay. Up until 2014 – which marked the 70th anniversary of the crash – none of the crew members knew about the monument or the biennial ceremonies. To think all of these years, as my grandfather recounted the harrowing tale of the crash to his friends and family, a Belgian farmer across the ocean was also telling this story.

We Will Build Ladders - is a collaborative art project between my seven-year-old daughters and myself. Pre-election we were talking a lot about what it means to do kindness and be inclusive as general themes that are especially important to first graders. The morning after the election my oldest daughter cried and I was surprised because my husband and I were careful to keep our political opinions as neutral as possible. She said, "I am afraid of the wall" and I was surprised that she had heard about the wall. She said, "what if they build it so high that no one can ever cross?" I told her, "I will build a ladder that is taller than any wall they could ever build." And then my daughters and I made a promise. Anytime we feel afraid, we will do something kind for someone else. We started an art project between the three of us to visualize what it might look like to build ladders.

We Will Build Ladders Series, Digital c-print, washi tape, stickers, permanent marker, 2016-18

From My Side of the World is a collaborative visual conversation between Michelle Westmark (US) and Magdel van Rooyen (SA). Over the course of six months, we have been posting photographic responses to each other’s images in blog-form. These 38 photographs explore cultural similarities and differences, landscapes, and current events. The photographs range from showing the difference in landscapes and difference in climates to visually talking about the monuments to the US Dakota war and ideas of cultural reconciliation and the illness and passing of Nelson Mandela. One of the most powerful aspects of this project has been being able to have a conversation in real time from two opposite sides of the world, through technology. Little did we know when we began this project, that it would conclude with the news of Nelson Mandela's passing. It has been a profound experience to see the overwhelming influence Mandela has had on not only South Africa, but also the world.

Michelle Westmark's The Telephone Booth, is a photographic social experiment, that took place at the Minnesota State Fair on August 26th, 2012 from 9am-9pm.

Fair-goers were invited to participate in a game of visual telephone. Similar to the game of telephone (you may remember it from your Middle School days), nine Holga film cameras were available for participants to check out and take one photo somewhere on the Fair Grounds that responded to the photo previously taken on that camera. Holga cameras are known for their low-quality plastic construction that offers the unpredictability of light leaks and vignetting. You may be familiar with the Instagram aesthetic which draws directly from the look of a Holga image. There were seven simple rules listed on a sign on the Telephone Booth:

1. Fill out the camera checkout form.

2. Read the previous photographer’s descriptive phrase in the camera’s corresponding logbook.

3. Familiarize yourself with HOW to use the Holga camera (we’re going old school and shooting film!)

4. Take ONE photograph somewhere on the Fair Grounds responding to the previous descriptive phrase. 

5. Do NOT advance the film once you’ve taken your photograph.

6. Return the camera to the Telephone Booth and log your own descriptive phrase about the photograph you’ve taken.

7. Please make your photograph within the ONE HOUR time limit. This will help us complete each roll of film today!

Each camera started with an image taken by Westmark somewhere on the fairgrounds that morning and each camera had a corresponding log book with a one sentence description of the first image. Each additional participant took a photo that responded to that sentence in some way and then logged a sentence of their own about the photo they took, and so on and so forth until we finished each roll of film. One-hundred-and-fifteen people participated in the project over the course of twelve hours. The images are printed in the form of contact sheets with photo credit given to those who participated, they are available for view on Facebook (fan page: The Telephone Booth).

Based on Charles Baudelaire's claim that a photograph can never be an authentic copy of real life, 12 photographers interpreted one another's photographs in a visual conversation that progressed around the country resulting in a photographic experiment in interpretation that functioned similarly to a game of visual telephone. This project explores the complexity of communication, perception and the inter-connection in an increasingly globalized/digitalized world.

Michelle Westmark began the photo chain by sending a 4"x6" postcard version of her image to be interpreted by the next photographer on the list who had a two week window to photographically respond to the image's subject, content or formal elements. They then sent a 4"x6" postcard version of their photograph to the next photographer on the list. This photographer interpreted the 2nd photo in the chain without seeing the original image and then continued the chain and so on until the conclusion of the project. Photographers and their locations include: Michelle Westmark (MN), Conor King (CO), Lindsay Borden (WA), Sarah Christianson (CA), Yasmin Etemadi (CA), Sarah Baron (NC), Sarah Stacke (NY), Salma Khalil (NY), Rachel Loischild (MA), Jason Flack (MA), Carl Sweets (IL), and Brett Kallusky (MN).

The Duality Project started as a very simple study of the clothing people have in their closets. In the beginning, I asked people to choose two outfits to be photographed in, one comfortable and the other uncomfortable. 

It was important that each item of clothing be something that the subject owned. The idea stemmed from all of the clothes I hang on to, purchase and never wear.

As the project progressed it evolved into something much more complex and it became clear that the project is about something more socially encompassing than body image. 

It has become a study of identity, gender difference, the viewer’s perception of the model, judgment of self, and each model’s duality within their respective portrait. I have been photographing people with a specific set of guidelines; which I encouraged each individual to interpret in their own way. I then set up my camera in one stationary spot and ask the model to move to different places in the frame with each change of wardrobe. Then, I digitally superimpose the two portraits together. The viewer is then faced with the judgment of which persona that particular person embraces as reality.