“My series of photographs, “Swimmers and Dreamers,” explores the relationship between swimming and dreaming as meditative and imaginative states of mind. Shut out from the stimuli of the external world, these swimmers and dreamers exist in a nebulous internal space where thoughts are unmoored from logic, and fantasy prevails. Bodies dissolve and are transported to shimmering places of transformation and metamorphosis. Objects cast auras. Houses become nests. Humans spread wings.”

After many years as a professor and scholar of art history at Middlebury College, four years ago Kirsten Hoving found herself irresistibly compelled to make art. In keeping with her art historical scholarship on surrealist art, her photography explores surrealist notions of the role of the dream and the dissolving or hybrid body. However, unlike earlier surrealist artists who reveled in the abject and grotesque, she seeks a sense of innocence and wonder in her work. Hoving received her B.F.A from Ohio Wesleyan University, her M.A. from the University of Delaware, and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is currently a professor of art history at Middlebury College, has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout the United States, and her images and articles have been published in magazines and selected art historical publications.

Back to exhibitors