Cheryl Maeder

Artist Cheryl Maeder

Fine Art Photographer & Video Installation Artist
https://www.maederphotography.com/
Email: maeder@maederphotography.com
Tel no. 415-845-6832
Instagram: @cherylmaeder
Facebook: @Artist Cheryl Maeder
Linkedin: @cherylmaeder

About the Artist

I am a Video Installation Artist and Photographer.

I was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and in my early 20s I moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where I studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts. After 8 years in Switzerland, I returned to the United States and opened my photography studio in San Francisco, where I photographed international advertising and fashion campaigns. I transitioned from photographing fashion models to photographing real women, to celebrate the beauty of women in all shapes and sizes. My photography work became the inspiration for the Dove Campaign on Real Women, Real Beauty which transformed the way women are viewed in the global media. In 2005, I relocated my studio to the Miami area and deeply immersed myself into fine art photography and filmmaking.

While the foundation of my work is photography, investigations into video and large-scale installations have expanded my visual world. By immersing myself into the world of new technologies and shifting between the mediums, new opportunities for rewarding and creative collaborations have occurred for large-scale installations.

Cheryl Maeder Artist Statement

The core of my work is about ‘connection’, the connection to the self, each other, to all life forms and the environment. It is my philosophy, that we humans are not only of this world, we are also connected to the broader universe. It is this concept that permeates and empowers my work.

My influences have been my studies in Quantum Physics. “Today physics & art are revealing their interconnectedness such that we are participating in a royal alchemical marriage. Art teaches us a new way to see the world; physics formulates a new way to think about the world”, Paul Levy, Quantum Revelation.

I chose the name Super Natural for my current project including photographs and video installation, as I am introducing the super saturated colors into our natural environment. I work with the elements of wind and natural light creating the fog of color in each setting, as well as, working with eco-friendly materials. The Super Natural mist brings a transformative breath into our world, as if coming from another dimension to heal our planet.

A Super Natural Experience: The Art of Cheryl Maeder

Cheryl Maeder has stated that her art, at its core is about connection; to the environment, to the self, to each other, and with all life forms. The artist indeed manifests a tangible connectiveness between nature, the optical realm of an artwork and in turn the viewer of the work. She does this through a methodology of performing ephemeral yet powerful interventions in a landscape. It is a time-consuming process that involves location scouting, multiple levels of planning, on-site trials and errors with her eco-friendly materials, and lots of shooting, whilst hoping for the weather to cooperate and enhance her activities. All of this so she can capture a split second of time where all the elements come together in an aesthetically gorgeous photograph or short film.

To create works for her Super Natural series, Maeder chooses a specific environmental scene and taps into the frequencies of weather by releasing a burst of bright primary color (she keeps the material a mystery) that rides the air, creating effects that exist in real time for only a few moments as wind and gravity quickly moves, blows and then dissipates the color. During the brevity of their flight, these clouds of color coalesce, with changing density and opaqueness morph into flowing shapes. The effect introduces artistically formal elements into the compositions, resulting in a connective collaboration with nature.

These aesthetic additions to a landscape echo and then heighten similar qualities of artful elements and principles that nature creates on its own, but most often we take for granted as we live our daily lives. In real life, it takes purposeful looking to get to the place of seeing, and feeling, a deeper appreciation of what nature provides us. Through her art, Maeder makes visible the powerful energies at play on our planet, unseen by the naked eye, yet internally sensed when we are in a deeply felt state of the wonder of nature.

The artist’s photographs, short films and installations present the observer with a feeling that they are witnessing something profound, perhaps even from the beyond. And the stunning natural landscape we are beholding somehow feels even more phenomenal, as if a supernatural experience attuned us to what we already know deep inside, if only we would let the connectiveness of the universe be more present in our lives.

By Kara Walker Tomé
Independent Arts Consultant, Curator and Writer
Instagram @karacuratortome

Exhibitions

• Permanent Collection, Phillip & Patricia Frost Art Museum, Coral Springs Museum of Art & Elliott Museum
• The Louvre Museum, Paris, Group Exhibition
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy, Miami New Media Film Festival, Public Art Platform, Art & Technology, Curated Thesis on Water, Climate Change & Communities Traveling Group Exhibition (Bogota, Caracas, Valencia, Miami, Santo Domingo, San Nicolas & Rome)
• Solo Retrospective Coral Springs Museum of Art
• Delta Air Lines, Permanent Collection, Exhibition of Video Installations at Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Los Angeles and LaGuardia/New York Airports
• Aspen Ideas: Climate, Aspen Institute in collaboration with the City of Miami Beach & Miami-Dade County, Dept. of Cultural Affairs
• Montefiore Medical Center, Radiation & Oncology Dept., Permanent Collection, New York
• Solo Exhibition Miami International Airport Sept. 2016-2017
• PBS featured Cheryl Maeder as Project Filmmaker, presenting her film on PBS nationally funded by National Endowment for the Arts
• Submerge, Public Art Video Installation, City of West Palm Beach, FL
• Auctioned at Sotheby’s New York