Susan Kae Grant

Susan Kae Grant, a Dallas artist, created large Iris giclee prints on archival paper for her exhibition, Night Journey. Ms. Grant’s work was inspired and created from her dreams that were systematically collected at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center sleep lab. Her shadow works were created through manipulation of images using constructed sets and digital photography.

Susan Kae Grant stated, “Night Journey represents a significant collaboration of artistic and scientific inquiry into the nature of dreams, memory and the unconscious. It takes two different forms; a suite of lushly printed black & white Iris prints and a room-size installation of murals printed on chiffon fabric. The inspiration for the project came from the desire to conduct an inquiry into the dream-state that led to the experiences sleeping as a subject in a sleep laboratory. The shadow gestures depicted in the images suggest a fragmented…impermanent quality of the dream-state. There also is an audio component, which is evocative and contextual, as the viewer proceeds through the space.”

The installation in the gallery at Women & Their Work consisted of an environment of large-scale (22″x 44″) images. The figures in the images appeared to float in space and come to life depending on the viewer’s position. Upon entering the dark space, a female voice could be heard whispering quietly from small speakers that were located overhead. Two overlapping soundtracks ran simultaneously on a continuous loop. The content contained actual phrases edited from dream recordings made in the sleep laboratory.