Proposed by: a member of Kanawha Garden Club, Zone VII

For nearly 50 years, celebrated American artist Olivia “Libby” Hood Parker has used photography to investigate the intersection of science and art, life and death, the natural and the man-made, the ephemeral and permanent.

Introduced to fine art as a child, Parker studied Art History in college. Soon after, as a wife and mother of two, making art was limited to painting in her spare time, but in the early 1970s she began to explore photography. Although self-taught, her rise in the field was rapid. By the late 1970s she was testing products for the Polaroid Corporation. Her first book, Signs of Life was published in 1978. Her skill was esteemed by the renowned photographer Ansel Adams who invited her to teach at his workshops, which she did through the 1980s in Yosemite and later in Carmel-by-the-Sea through Friends of Photography, a nonprofit initiated by Adams and other notable twentieth-century photographers.

The Boston-area artist’s decades-long career has been marked by openness to rapidly evolving techniques and technologies. Her painterly approach and keen eye for subtlety and detail, color and light are ever present. An inveterate forager with a lifelong fascination with nature, bones, plants, stones, and insects are among the objects that are the subjects of her work. Through her carefully crafted compositions, Parker invites the viewer to explore the wonders of the natural world. 

More than 100 solo exhibitions of Parker’s work have been held across the United States and internationally. Her photographs form part of private and corporate collections as well as the collections at The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in 2019.