JoAnn T. Arduini

JoAnn lives in an old house with lots of character and an over grown garden in Chicago. She's a certified acupuncturist, she meditates and recently bought a motorcycle.

JoAnn has always been interested in other times and other places. In college she majored in Art History and the first thing she did after her schooling was go to Italy for several months. She will never forget how beautiful it was and how the charm of the whole experience influenced her life. JoAnn always returns to Europe because she loves the gardens and the feeling of other times long gone. She enjoys reading history and picking up a thread then unraveling it. One book on a person can lead to another about the time in which they lived, and then a little deeper and she's branching off into the architecture and the gardens. That's how she chooses which country to visit. She says, "I want to walk the paths these people walked, and try to experience their world. Photography is the way I soak it all in. It's a very intuitive process; one can look deeply into my images."

Using black and white film, she sepia tones the prints and hand colors them with photographic oil paints. "I want my images to look old and romantic. When I exhibit my work, people always stop to tell me their stories of when they were traveling and how my work puts them right back in that moment. It's very gratifying to share this with them."