Maine artist Ann Tracy shows digital work at a medical marijuana dispensary during July 2019.  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / PRURGENT
Ann Tracy, Maine's self-proclaimed "Digital Alchemist" will show a variety of work at the Portland branch of the Wellness Connection, 685 Congress Street, starting on the First Friday in July and running all through the month until July 27th. An artist's reception is set for Friday, July 5th from 5:30 to 7:30 pm at the dispensary, but only for those over 21 years of age. No medical marijuana card is needed.
"We wanted to create a different kind of experience for people," said Cory Osborne, Wellness Connection events coordinator. "We wanted to invite folks who may not have entered a dispensary before to be welcomed in and to see some art!"
Tracy will be showing a variety of work created digitally based on her photography. You'll see some of her early work from the Power Series as well as selected digital woodcut prints and photographs from Maine to Cuba. Tracy calls herself a "Digital Alchemist" because she takes imagery which has one meaning and combines it with other imagery to create new meaning for the viewer. And she doesn't subscribe to just one interpretation, as she feels that everyone brings their own stories to the images.
"I'm a big fan of ambiguity and chance in making art, since my salad days as a modern dancer (early 1970s) and happening upon Merce Cunningham's theory of Chance Dance and the work of the Dadaists. I also use conceptual and methodological approaches borrowed from my other life practices of performance, theater, dance, and journalism. In calling myself a digital alchemist, I'm trying to reference both a classical past and a forward reaching future in which images with one meaning are combined with others to create new and poetic meanings. It's as if I'm being called home to a dream world in which fiction and reality meet, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Sometimes I like the photograph the way it is, then the manipulations are more focused on heightening the impact via color, design and emotional context. But other images call out to be a basis for combining unrelated aspects which many times lead to surprising analogies."
Her fine art has been exhibited from Japan to Maui to New York City to Spain and Budapest, Hungary. She was a 2014, 2015 and 2016 finalist in the Julia Margaret Cameron competition and was invited to exhibit at the 3rd Photographic Biennale in Malaga, Spain, as well as the 4th Photographic Biennale this fall in Berlin. In 2003 her work, “Stop” was included in the catalog of the “Violence Against Women” exhibition, Group 78 Amnesty International, Tokyo, Japan. Her digital paintings “The Power of Romania Lies in its Artists” and “Message 3” were juried into the 2010 and 2008 editions of “American Art Collector”. She presented a creativity workshop to feature writers at the Sacramento Bee, a daily newspaper in 2008. Tracy has also worked as an art expert for KVIE CH 6 (PBS Sacramento) for the 2010 Art Auction and was featured in Sacramento Magazine in November 2010 (http://www.sacmag.com/media/Sacramento-Magazine/November-2010/City-Sketch-Ann-Tracy/). | 
