“Dreamscapes” : Works of Art, Custom Made From Your Photos

Digital artist, Nancy Gershman of Art For Your Sake (www.artforyoursake.com) creates digital photomontages from client photos to celebrate life, love and the healing process.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) May 20, 2006 -- Thanks to the transformative power of digital photo manipulation, Nancy Gershman’s dreamscapes feel like a snapshot of a dream. Seamless, true to scale, with shadow play and witty effects, these photomontages are in fact hybrid objects. Almost any scan-able image can find itself in a dreamscape, including people, pets, objects or landscapes from cherished photos, but also memorabilia, personal artwork, as well as minutiae and backdrops from Nancy’s own vast image library. (Ask Nancy to show you her lily pad photos, which she personally photographed in pre-Katrina New Orleans.)

The concept behind her studio (aptly called Art For Your Sake) is to create that One Perfect Photo from the hundreds of photos we take with our digital cameras, and the hundreds of vintage photos lying inert in our shoeboxes and crumbling albums. Not only does Nancy expertly mix and match skies and interiors or heads and bodies, but she can tame clouds into musical notes, and turn blurry flowers into steaming potatoes. She’s also masterful at retouching and restoring your photos, and all but the most extensive reconstruction is included in her pricing. Aunt Phoebe missing the top of her head? Nancy will clone her curls from another photo. Color washed out of her complexion and clothing? Watch Nancy pour rich, saturated color back into the photo.

Her background in advertising is abundantly evident, especially in her wacky juxtapositions (like the RV perched on top of Stonehenge) and her playfulness with scale (such as the olive tree shrunk down to fit the grasp of a small boy dressed as a soldier). But here her creative process diverges from advertising, as it is driven more by intuition than trends. One client, Anne H, recalls:

“Nancy sat down with me and reviewed family albums to pick photos for a collage. She has tremendous empathy and a true artist’s eye for patterns … Just working with her on the selection began to break up my old, locked-in ways of relating to the photos.”

Perhaps the most touching part of the process is the creation of narratives, prose or poetry by the clients themselves – a stellar accompaniment to the original gift. Nancy encourages clients to especially interpret their “healing dreamscapes” which are special commissions offered as peace offerings and ice-breakers, or as a reward for positive thinking or a stimulus to jog memory.

The price of a photomontage is determined by the number of photos (yours or Nancy's), with prices starting at $48 to combine two photos, and rising from there. In addition to her photomontage portraits and vacation keepsakes, (8 x 10 prints on glossy or luster photographic paper), her studio also produces complete invitation sets and save-the-dates, holiday cards and bags (working with the photo-purse impresario, Bagettes.com).

"It's artistic, and all for your sake," goes her tagline. How much more personalized can a gift get?

Visit Nancy’s extensive gallery site at www.artforyoursake.com.

Contact Information:
Nancy Gershman
Art For Your Sake
522 West Barry Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60657-5417
773.255.4677 (voice)
773.935.1531 (fax)

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