MOLLY WOOD

Des Moines, Iowa

Molly Wood learned photography at a young age from her grandfather during their walks together, cameras in hand, around his small-town Louisiana farm. Her favorite photographic subjects were the things that were interesting from the eye level of a child: plants, flowers, and trees. Many of the plants on the farm had stories behind them; like the live oak tree outside of the schoolhouse where his dog used to wait for him in the shade and the bearded irises that were planted by his grandmother and bloomed every spring. For Wood, the act of making photographs became entwined with studying botanicals that are rich with symbolic and personal history. Wood images are also influenced by her master's degree in art history and her time spent living in Vienna.

In 2018, Wood was chosen as one of five Iowa Arts Council Fellows and has received several Iowa Arts Council project grants. Her work can be found in the corporate collections of J.P. Morgan Chase, Principal Financial, Farm Bureau and Bankers Trust, as well as the permanent collection of the Sioux City Art Center and the Grace Museum in Abilene, Texas.

Wood’s photographs have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Sioux City Art Center, the Dubuque Museum of Art, the Muscatine Museum of Art, Central College in Pella, St Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa State University in Ames and the Des Moines Botanical Center. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Midwest Center for Photography in Wichita, the Photographic Arts Center in Denver, and has been featured on the cover of DSM Magazine, the Iowa Review and the Briar Cliff Review.