Artist Spotlight: Our Great Indoors by Erin Sullivan

On View:

#SLVA1 Screen at the Courtyard Marriott

901 W. Olympic Blvd. – Los Angeles, CA

Playing every 5 minutes from August 24th – September 6th

StandardVision's latest artist spotlight features photographs from Los Angeles-based travel photographer Erin Sullivan's recent series Our Great Indoors, a clever and imaginative collection of constructed "travel" photos created during stay-at-home orders due to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Incorporating food and other household objects, Sullivan crafts fantastical miniature nature and outdoor scenes. Appropriately titled Our Great Indoors, Sullivan channels her inner child into this whimsical and creative “nature photography” series by carefully constructing landscape scenes involving everything from pancakes and broccoli florets to pillow cases and train set figurines.

Sullivan's photos are "an intriguing mix of fantasy and familiarity," during an extremely uncertain time. Sharing details about the unconventional series, Sullivan says, "creativity can thrive given constraints [...] That's part of art, the process of experimentation."As she constructs these indoor scenes to photograph, Sullivan explores the ways in which she can cleverly manipulate the household items, investigating the effects of light, texture, shadow and color. When photographing indoors, Sullivan shares, it's even more crucial to examine these details.

Of her process, Sullivan explains, “I try to get very clear on the idea for a scene before I start to assemble it. Once I have an idea and sketch it out, it can take me 10 minutes to an hour to set up a scene, then usually 30-60 minutes to photograph it. Sometimes things don't go the way I planned, so I just try to stay open to changes and to enjoy the experimentation part of the process.”

Check out Sullivan's playful series Our Great Indoors on view at the #SVLA1 through September 6th, and on her Instagram.