Born in 1955 in Detroit Michigan, Michele Zalopany is a contemporary American artist best known for her large-scale watercolor and pastel paintings based on photographs found in digital picture collections, old books, and flea markets, etc. Found photographs and film screen shots that had originally served other purposes — family snapshots, police photos, real estate, travel documentation — when rendered, directly from the image, with traditional art materials, take on additional meanings, such as socio-psychological-political content.
She exhibited in the 1989 Whitney Biennial and her work is included in more than 25 institutions including the Museum of Fine Art, Boston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Yokohama Museum, Japan; Royal College of Art, London.
