Parker Thornton
Photography
Artist’s Statement
Animus uses dark humor to investigate the uneasy intimacy of the modern relationship between human bodies and nature. The work includes photographs, short stories, edible sculptures, and appropriated video footage from voyeuristic animal livestream websites, as well as trees, boulders, and logs “skinned” using latex. Loosely based on the Greek myths portrayed in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the work is interested in the erotics of power.
Materials and methods include latex, camel hair, burned wood, ivy, synthetic hair, rendered animal fat, birdseed, textile, edible sculpture, trail camera surveillance photography, footage from livestream cameras in animal sanctuaries, archival inkjet prints, and laser-etched lucite.
Hometown
Atlanta, GA
Parker Thornton is an artist and writer who lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She earned her B.A. in English Literature and Studio Art from Oglethorpe University in 2013 and her M.F.A. in Photography from Georgia State University in 2020. Her practice ranges from lens-based media to sculpture, writing, and performance.
She has exhibited work nationally at Whitespace, Historic Oakland Cemetery, and SOUP Experimental. Parker was the 2020 winner of the Andrew M. West Scholarship at Georgia State University. In 2019, she was an artist in residence at Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland. That year she was also granted a scholarship to attend Anderson Ranch Art Center, and won ‘Best in Show’ at Day and Night Projects.
Parker was the inaugural guest curator for Murmur Media’s Quarter Program in 2016. She co-founded Callosum Collective, an Atlanta-based creative collective that applies collaborative methods across media to explore the intersections between art, technology, and the senses. Callosum Collective was awarded an Idea Capital grant in 2014 and invited to participate in Theater Emory’s Breaking Ground series in 2015.
Undergrad
B.A. in Studio Art, Oglethorpe University (2013)
B.A. in English Literature, Oglethorpe University (2013)
