About the Artist
Bell’s work is inspired by place and time. Her practice draws on the world around her, in particular the scrutiny of the built environment. She spent her childhood in Latin America and Southeast Asia. She is the recipient of many fellowships including the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Pollock Krasner Fellowship, and a Fulbright to Turkey. Her Fulbright project The City as The Site of Intervention resulted in a series of projects in public spaces. As a Fulbright specialist leading walking workshops internationally; workshops have been held in Sharjah, UAE, Istanbul, Turkey and Malmö, Sweden. She was awarded a residency at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY and at the Electronic Print Center at Alfred University, Alfred, NY. Internationally she has had residencies at the Stadt künstlerhaus, Salzburg, Austria and in 2020 at CITE International in Paris. In 2017 Visual Studies Press published Do You Know This Tree?
About the Works
The street, the people, the mundane these form the image of place. My neighborhood of Karaköy in Istanbul. By erasing the iconic architecture of the city, the image of place is revealed through the intersection of life and the street. Universal Color, is a photographic project that began as an exploration of the everydayness of the locale. The accidental discovery of the towel as the signifier of place evolved into an ongoing mapping and documenting of the ubiquitous towel. Their similarity of the solid block color announced the local barber shop. The towels—faded sheets of universal color laid street by street drying in the sun formed the points on the map. The distinction of place staged by the juxtaposing elements which by chance accompanied the racks of towels; the chair, the fruit stand., the people. The architecture dissolves, becoming unintrusive. Allowing the exterior to shape the city, the street no longer exists peripherally.
