Kristine Potter (BFA, BA 2003) has been selected for a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Potter's work generally focuses on the narrative of "America" and the ways in which a new frame of seeing can complicate those stories we've told ourselves about who we are. Her newest body of work, and that which she will continue to pursue with the Guggenheim Fellowship, is called Dark Waters. This work takes root in and around bodies of water with violent or ominous names. Examples include: Murder Creek, Deadman's Branch, and Bloody River, though there are many more. The landscape of the southeast is thick with such waters, their names seeming to reflect something fundamental to how this land was settled. Potter is photographing these waters and the people and landscapes that surround them. She is making visual what she sees to be a feedback loop between nature and myth, the way in which a threatening landscape primes a culture for violence, and how a violent culture relishes projecting threat onto a landscape. 

United States Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife established the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1925 as a memorial to a son who died April 26, 1922. Awarded through a rigorous selection process, the Fellowships are intended for individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

Potter received a BFA with an emphasis in Photography and BA in Art History from the University of Georgia and a MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2005. Her work has shown nationally and internationally including at such galleries and institutions as Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York City, Light Work in Syracuse, NY, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the Neuberger Museum of Art. Her work belongs in numerous public and private collections, including that of the Georgia Museum of Art, Light Work, and 601 Artspace in New York City. Potter was selected as Artist in Residence at Light Work in 2014, and her work has been recognized with nominations to the MACK First Book Award, as well as the Shortlist to the 2016 Kassel Book Prize.