Laura McClanahan is the first member of Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ to receive their Solo Show Exhibition Award.  The exhibition is on view this fall from October 11th through November 22nd, 2009.

A resident of Glen Gardner, New Jersey, McClanahan works in photography, video and installation.  Her current exhibition, PLANKTONIC CONSTRUCTS, features color photograms and video abstractions inspired by various species of plankton.  Using a darkroom enlarger as a microscope, and glass objects (often of her own making) to represent microorganisms, the artist adds light to create works that resemble various diatoms, algae, echinoderms and jellyfish.  She notes, “I am looking for origins, a life source and what makes something alive. In my own style of scientific investigation, I invite the viewer into a constructed world.”  Two intriguing videos made from filmed footage of aquarium jellyfish add a dynamic element.
 
In April, Simon Gallery in Morristown, New Jersey representing McClanahan, featured her abstract photography in a usually paintings only gallery. Another solo exhibition was at the Arts Club of Washington, D.C. in May where her show of photograms was curated and introduced by Dr. Erich Keel of the Kreeger Museum who announced her show as important contemporary work that carries on the tradition of photograms from Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Showing with British naturalist artist Damien Hirst as part of a group exhibition entitled, "Specimen: Representing the Natural World," at the Paul Robeson Gallery at Rutgers in Newark, New Jersey in January, her "Planktonic" photograms took on titles bearing scientific names representing real microorganisms for the first time. McClanahan has been represented through Gallery Imperato in Baltimore, MD since 2007 when she received her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.