Kelly Hider was raised in Rochester, NY. She received her BFA from SUNY Brockport in 2007, and an MFA from the University of Tennessee in 2011. Recent solo shows include exhibits at Unrequited Leisure in Nashville, the Central Collective in Knoxville, the Clayton Arts Center in Maryville, TN, and Lincoln Memorial University. Hider’s work was featured on the cover of the independent art journal, Number: Inc. in 2016, and she has been twice awarded Ann & Steve Bailey Opportunity Grants through the Arts & Culture Alliance’s Heritage Fund in Knoxville. A proud Hambidge Fellow, Hider completed an artist residency at the Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, Georgia in 2019. Hider is a founding member and resident artist at the Vacuum Shop Studios, and works at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts as their Youth Education Program Manager.

Through photo-editing and surface manipulations, my work traces threads within an existing domestic visual narrative, as well as creating new ones. The carefully applied surface embellishments suggest human care, and by altering these found images and presenting them in a gallery setting, they are given new life and purpose. Photoshop tools are used to highlight both the presence and absence of subject, and an exposed vulnerability to the passage of time. The surface glitter embellishments are both seductive and unsettling. I use a variety of vernacular photographic source material – Kodachrome slides from the 1950s, antique black and white photos from the 1930s, and family snapshots from the 1980s. Existing first as an object, then scanned and digitized, and enlarged and printed, from these images many stories emerge: some personal, some universal, others surreal and fictitious.