ALL: Master Collection List
Nationality
American
Preview
Date of Work
2025
Medium
Scanography
Height
36”
Width
24”
Collection/Provenance
Department of Research & Economic Development Collection
Status
Displayed
Location
Division of Research & Economic Development
Artist Bio
Haley Nelson is from Casselton, North Dakota and is known for her unique work in the medium of scanography which uses a traditional scanner to create works that take ordinary elements of nature like bubbles or flowers and depict them in an abstracted manner.
From the artist:
Haley Nelson is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in experimental photography and scanography. Rooted in the Upper Midwest, her practice combines traditional photographic sensibilities with unconventional processes, using flatbed scanners as tools for extended observation and image-making.
Her work transforms ordinary materials like botanicals, plastics, liquids, and everyday objects into dynamic still lifes and curious abstractions. Through slow looking, repetition, and experimentation, Nelson explores how subtle shifts in light, pressure, and movement reshape perception.
Each piece emerges through an iterative process of hypothesis, testing, and refinement. By allowing materials to perform and images to unfold gradually, her work invites viewers to reconsider what is familiar, revealing complexity within the overlooked and beauty within the mundane.
Additional Information
PRAIRE SURREALISM
On the northern plains, "drift" can mean snow reshaped by wind, seeds carried across fields, migratory patterns, shifting rivers, radio signals, data transmission, even the gradual movement of ideas across disciplines and communities. The word implies motion, adaption, and change without a fixed destination.
Created using a flatbed scanner rather than a traditional camera, Signal Drift transforms a familiar imaging technology into a tool for artistic exploration. the resulting images blurs distinctions between observation and invention, producing luminous forms that evoke cellular structures, cosmic phenomena, digital signals, and flowing waterways simultaneously.
Description: An abstracted scan of bubbles and colorful wavy reflections on a black background.
Condition
Excellent
Rights
“Images are provided for educational purposes only and may not be reproduced for commercial use. Images may be protected by artist copyright. A credit line is required to be used for any public non-commercial educational purpose. The credit line must include, “Image courtesy of the University of North Dakota.”