About The Artist

Caren Helene Rudman works with mixed media, photography, and writing. The content of her work explores how energy comes through the body within the process of making art. She has exhibited locally in Chicago and Nationally with shows in NYC. She received her MA from NYU in a prestigious program affiliated with the International Center of Photography. From 2010 to 2012, she curated an annual exhibition, Voices and Visions, Standing on the Bridge Between Health and Disease, at The Art Center Highland Park. The 2010 exhibit, sponsored by Medline, traveled nationally. Caren’s work examines the dichotomies between self and other, mind and body, and health and disease. After learning she carries the BRCA 1 gene, a hereditary increased risk for breast and ovarian cancers, her work further delved into genetics, linking the past and future generations. In the ongoing project titled, Redefining Beauty, she collaborates with women throughout the world who share images of their bodies, which she uses in her own mixed media pieces on un-stretched canvas. Previving is an extension of Redefining Beauty, documenting her own journey of living under the threat of developing disease. While redefining Beauty reaches outward at the universality, Previving turns inward into real life experiences. Both of these series reveal the process of letting go, and of rebuilding, attempting to connect mind and body within context of healing through art. The metaphor of cancer allows Caren to explore the themes around facing mortality, reflecting that out of darkness comes light and often beauty lies deep beneath the surface.