BIO
Irene Imfeld is an artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with photo-based mixed media and handmade books. After a lifetime of interest in photography she splits her work between straightforward photographs of the natural world and painterly abstractions, following a serendipitous path. Grounded in common reality and composed in camera, her work has evolved with digital advances to become more intricate over time. She sometimes mixes manipulated images with representational ones in handmade books that easily accommodate this poetic fusion.
She is an active member of the Bay Area photo community: Co-owner and curator of PHOTO, a gallery in Oakland, organizing and mounting over 50 exhibits from 2010 through 2015; PhotoAlliance Board of Directors; Bay Area Photographers Collective; SFMOMA FotoForum. She curated Touchstone, an exhibit of monochrome landscape work from five very different photographers at Chung 24 Gallery, San Francisco, in 2023.
Her past experience includes working as a commercial book designer, and studying/exhibiting textile arts. She participated in an art exchange trip to Japan, and won the Soho Photo Gallery portfolio prize with a showing in New York. She received funded artist residencies at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, and at Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency.
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See PHOTO’s exhibits here.
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The Same Is Not The Same, with images from several series, was exhibited at Peninsula Museum of Art, July–Oct 2019. Listen to interview with artists Irene Imfeld and Charles Anselmo, with curator DeWitt Cheng here. Read the curator’s statement here.
Artist Talk
Artist talk at the Phantasm exhibit at Chung 24 Gallery, San Francisco, 2024
Irene & friends
Irene with Heather Snyder and Rachel Phillips at Chung 24 Gallery, San Francisco, 2024
Chung24 2023
The Touchstone crew at Chung 24 Gallery, San Francisco: Tony Bellaver, Cindy Stokes, Michael Starkman, Irene Imfeld, Susannah Hays, Mark Citret. 2023
Michael Jang, Ann Jastrab, Hiroyo Kaneko, and Irene Imfeld at PHOTO, Oakland, 2015
Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, 2015, From left: unnamed local naturalist, Irene Imfeld, Chloe Manasseh, Alison Stigora, Devin Symons, Steve Rieman, Sarah Kennington (front), Ruth Rieman, Steve Bardwell, James Berg
Irene Imfeld and Vicki Chardak escort Japanese artists at di Rosa, Napa, 2015
Reception for Bernheim Forest directors, at the home of John and Ann Price Davis, Louisville, 2017
Installation of Clouds, printed on aluminum, at Vessel Gallery, 2018
Photo of Irene by Gerhard Nicholson, taken with one of his vacuum-cleaner cameras, mid-1970s
Irene and Hyeyoung Kim at PHOTO, 2014
Sertorio
Irene Imfeld and Nicolo Sertorio at his exhibit at PHOTO in 2012.
Photolucida-2017
Irene Imfeld showing the large book, Strangeness of Seeing, at Photolucida, Portland, Oregon, 2017.
Mitchell
Margaretta Mitchell and Irene Imfeld at the opening of Margaretta’s 2013 exhibit at PHOTO.
Garlington
Visiting the Petaluma studio of Michael Garlington and Natalia Bertotti in 2015. From left: Henry Bowles, Natalia, Michael, Irene.
Sakai
Irene Imfeld speaking about her landscape panoramas in Sakai, Japan, 2006.
Installation-KaiserRoseville
Four of the acrylic panels installed at Kaiser Clinic, Roseville, CA, 2020.