Courtney Egan
b. 1966
New Orleans, LA
Courtney Egan’s projection-based installations weave botanical art with sculpture and technology. Strongly inspired by the profusion of flora in New Orleans, where she has lived and worked since 1991, her work digitally manipulates the natural world, questioning how our perception of nature is altered by technology.
Courtney began her artistic journey as a photographer. After graduate school at the Maryland Institute of Art, she produced short experimental films about the construction of femininity that screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, among others.
The pivotal experience of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused her to shift her focus onto the natural world and how humans choose to interact with it. After months of living in the deadened, monotone, urban environment of post flood-damaged New Orleans, the experience of seeing the natural world explode into color the next spring had a profound emotional impact on Courtney. She began working with plants that thrive and are cultivated in New Orleans, regionally native and non-native, and continues to create video-based projection artworks with flowers. Her process involves creating photographic time-lapses, with which she digitally composites and animates to create “collages in motion.”
Her artworks are mostly projection-based, and are meant to be experienced during most times of day in typical indoor, ambient lighting conditions. She strives to create pieces that work with lived interiors, and do not require special viewing considerations. She wants the experience of looking at one of her artworks to be similar to that of viewing a painting, where new discoveries are made over time.
Native and endangered species are the next flowers that Courtney plans to work with, as she adjusts her photo techniques to accommodate shooting on site.
