San Francisco-based artist Alice Shaw has practiced photography for more than twenty-five years. Shaw’s recent work centers around humanity’s conscious effort to be less prone to conquer the environment and more determined to actively preserve the planet’s natural beauty. Inspired by how gold and other precious metals were used in Byzantine art to beautify and revere paintings and icons, Shaw enshrines parts of her black-and-white images with twenty-two karat gold leaf to instill a renewed reverence for nature.
Alice Shaw received a BFA and MFA in photography from San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). Her work can be found in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the di Rosa Foundation, Napa, California. She was visiting lecturer at University of California, Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz, University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and California College of Art. She is adjunct faculty at SFAI and Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, California.