Ann Weiner

Ann Weiner is a conceptual artist and philanthropist who has worked in many media.

Her technological interventions in digital photography have expanded the possibilities of how images are seen. In a series of works 2005-6, for example, she manipulated images, running them through filters and placing them under lenticular lenses, a technology used for 3D displays that gives images the illusion of depth. Different components of the photographs fall into and out of view, depending on the angle from which they are viewed, and unlike holographs, they images can be viewed in any kind of light. Weiner’s optical reconfigurations subvert the false objectivity of photography, making the act of looking a subjective and environmentally specific experience.

In 2018 she produced a body of work featuring nine life-size sculptures that represent current day heroines for Women’s Rights that debuted at the Housatonic Museum in January 2018.

In discussing her process of creation, she has said: “I create from a place I access upon entering my studio and ‘beginning to work’. Often I don’t know what that ‘beginning’ will lead to. I start by clearing off my work table and putting things back in their places: brushes, paints, used containers. A scrap of paper or a discarded object will arrest my focus and initiate my path. Once started, the work leads me. I don’t lead the work.

I marvel at this process of connecting, unfolding, building, thinking. Equipped with training and practice over a span of disciplines, I call upon a variety of techniques to create; to choose the medium that best expresses what I need to say. How it all comes together, though, remains a mystery to me. I begin, and then follow; and when one direction doesn’t work, I set forth on another. The hardest thing that I do, and maybe the most important, is to risk destroying a piece of work in the process of trying to make it better.

Often, when I look at work I’ve completed, I am humbled by the knowledge that a force greater than myself was responsible for its creation, and I’m grateful to have acquired the tools to make it happen.

In 2017, Ann won a a legacy award from Silvermine Art Center for her longstanding dedication and philanthropy to the institution. Ann and her late husband Sid sponsored a new woodworking studio at Silvermine where she also served on the Board of Directors and authored a book on its history for the 90th anniversary celebration.