Daphane Park is currently working with painting, sculptural installation and performance, research and energy medicine. Her work inquires into mythical realms of humanity and highlights a need to question the basic categories and values through which we look at life today. This is in part an expression of unifying opposites such as science/spirituality, human/non-human, male/female, micro/macro, idealism/realism, and utopic/distopic, especially in relation to the multiplicity of the forms of nature. A self taught naturalist; since childhood she collected seeds, shells, leaves, minerals and other fragments to examine. She recalls viewing details and patterns, such as the veins of leaves or rocks, as maps or codes to a larger order.

Park’s work has exhibited internationally for over 10 years and has received numerous grants and awards. As a recipient of a Fulbright research award and a grant from the Cultural Affairs Department of the US Embassy in Ecuador, where she lived and worked for over 2 years, she launched a solo exhibition that traveled to various museums in South America. Park has held teaching appointments in the Department of Fine Arts at the Universidad Central, Quito, Ecuador as well as at the University of Texas in Austin and Castiglione Fiorentino, Italy.

The Creative Research Grant awarded by the Honors Division at Indiana University in 1992-93 gave Park the first opportunity of a self-led and in-depth investigation, ultimately influencing a body of work and solo exhibition. At this time she studied both the modern-contemporary political and cultural environment, as well as the ancient Mayan cosmology in Meso-America.

Park’s inquiries into ancient and indigenous land-based cultures as well as her own Native American ancestry has naturally led her to study energy medicine from across the globe, including work in the far interior Amazon, where she lived and studied under two Shaman Dreamers for a significant period of time.

In Park’s recent sculpture and installation work she creates an energy field from a layering of carefully selected materials that emulates the accumulation of life itself. These ‘objects of performance’ she refers to as Superconductor are designed to circulate life force energy, for anyone to directly participate and engage, while at the same time offering a strong visual, audio, olfactory, and textural presence for the audience to experience.

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