Cynthia Connolly

Cynthia Connolly is a photographer, curator, letterpress printer and artist who lives in the Arlington, Virginia. She graduated from both the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and Auburn University’s Rural Studio, worked for Dischord Records and booked an avant-garde performance venue, d.c. space. In 1988 she published Banned in DC: Photos and Anecdotes From the DC Punk Underground (79–86) through her independent press Sun Dog Propaganda. Internationally shown and a prolific artist, her photographic work, postcards and books were exhibited in Beautiful Losers in the United States and Europe from 2004–2009 establishing herself as a pioneer in DIY culture. Reviewed internationally, her photography is in many private collections, as well as the The J. Paul Getty Museum, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Smithsonian Museum of American History and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants for her projects, she has been curator for Arlington County, Virginia for over a decade and continues to search the world both as curator and artist to connect disparate places, people and things.

E-Z U-Frame-It made especially for the Transformer FlatFile
The E-Z U-Frame-It is a simple original art kit in a hang bag. The owner can hang the bag as-is or take the 4”x 6” photograph out and easily place it in a ready-made frame. The letterpressed back boarding (or “Certificate of Authenticity”) can be placed on the back of the frame or in the frame. Connolly letterpressed and signed the Certificates.

Using ephemera collected my entire life, (which are clues to many of these hidden gems of places or communities) including copies of my personal collection of punk flyers circa 1979-82, test silver gelatin strips from the darkroom, scraps from the letterpress shop(or newly inspired letterpress), sublime cool old graphics in old postcards, magazines or books, scraps of yellowed paper bought at estate sales, I sewed them together in little booklets called FINDINGS. Each one is unique, and a flip through of things old and new. I used different methods to hold this all together. For example, I took copies of my old punk flyers, sewed test strips photos on the back, cut them up and transformed them into abstract artwork that serve as pages of the booklet. Each page is its own story, hopping around from the present to the past to the present. Frame it, or put it on a table or hide it in a book shelf to discover 10 years later.

www.cynthiaconnolly.com