Celeste Nelms

(b. 1960; resides St. Paul, MN)

Working with discarded objects found in thrift stores and yard sales, Celeste Nelms creates sepia-toned photographs in which she interacts with them. Showing a reverence for found objects, the photographs are then placed in thrift-store frames. By turns playful and melancholy, her pictures touch upon the themes of memory, aging, and nostalgia.

Celeste Nelms studied in Missouri at the Kansas City Art Institute and in Sendai, Japan at both Japan College of Design and Miyagi Bunka College. In Minneapolis alone, her work has been shown at the Walker Art Center, Minnesota Center for Photography, Gallery 360, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota. The Minnesota State Arts Board awarded Nelms a Photography Fellowship in 1999 and a Career Opportunity Grant in 2001, and in 2003 she received a McKnight Foundation Photography Fellowship.