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About Jonna

Baltimore City

Jonna McKone is an artist, filmmaker, and photographer.  Her work spans video and film, documentary, archives, abstraction and long-term collaborations to explore personal and collective histories, land and memory, and overlooked histories. 

Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums including recent shows: Unbound 13 at Candela Gallery (Richmond, MD), Zimmerli Art Museum (New Brunswick, NJ), Art/Sound/Now at Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, MD), Kinetic at Hamiltonian (Washington, DC), Fragmented at Zo Gallery in Baltimore,… more

See $2,500 Baker Artist Award Winning Portfolio
Jump to a project:

Slow Drift

Slow Drift is a photography, installation and research project exploring landscapes connected to legacies of plantations in Maryland.  The work records soundscapes, people, landscapes, suburban and rural spaces and objects. Each image traverses history through large format photographs, non-lens processes, medium format photography, and archives.

  • Simpsonville, Howard County, MD
    Simpsonville, Howard County, MD
    2021, large format film, archival pigment print
  • “The Land Lies in Ancient Ridges” (a letter written by Richard Ferris, April 15, 1862), Takoma Park, MD
    “The Land Lies in Ancient Ridges” (a letter written by Richard Ferris, April 15, 1862), Takoma Park, MD
    2021, large format film, archival pigment print
  • Heavy Roses
    Heavy Roses

    Medium Format Film, 28 x 36, from Slow Drift

    Available for Purchase
  • Pocomoke City Prom
    Pocomoke City Prom
  • Installation view @ VisArts
    Installation view @ VisArts
    installation view as part of "Slow Drift" exhibition at VisArts
  • Installation view @ VisArts
    Installation view @ VisArts
    chemi-lumen and color works at VisArts in Rockville, MD as part of a solo show
  • Slow Drift #1
    Slow Drift #1
    Chemi-lumen print
  • Untitled
    Untitled
    Available for Purchase
    •

    • Ruins, I

    This installation was performed with members of Raw Silk. Made from a 100-foot roll of 16mm film shot in the Walters Art museum, the objects seen in the film were illuminated with conservation-appropriate lighting. The footage maps archaeological eras through chronological and proportional 16mm footage -- each frame of the film represents approximately 1.6 years. The emulsion was then subjected to processes like bleaching, burying, soaking and scratching inspired by technological, geographic or geological events associated with archaeological periods and eras dating back to 4500 BCE (the age of the oldest object documented in the film.) (Camera/Editor/Director)
    • Still from film, 1
      Still from film, 1
    • Still from film, 2
      Still from film, 2
    • Still from film, 3
      Still from film, 3
    • Embedded video media on Vimeo
    •

    • A Year In Voicemails

    A short documentary about places and traces -- abstracted phone booths become increasingly legible as the catalog of information about a father and son grows. This piece asks us to consider the nature of the artifacts we leave behind, particularly audio voicemails, a digital artifact, recorded and performed, with expectation of being quickly deleted.  (Camera/Editor/Director)
    • A Year In Voicemails
      clip from "A Year in Voicemails"
    •

    Yields

    An experimental documentary film, non-narrated and observational, that looks at the historic and economic vestiges embedded in gesture and landscape in a rural region of North Carolina. Yields meditates on the failure of industrial promise through a series of short vignettes that aggregate to express how absurdly intertwined a place can become with what it produces. The film is a meditation on sound, landscape, and labor in a rural economy abruptly severed from its historical connection to the production and processing of poultry. (Camera/Editor/Director)
    • Still from film, 1
      Still from film, 1
      still from film
    • Still from film, 2
      Still from film, 2
    • Still from film, 3
      Still from film, 3
    • Still from film, 4
      Still from film, 4
    • Still from film, 5
      Still from film, 5
    • Yields
      https://vimeo.com/123304456/551591eb43
    •

    • For The Time Being


    A nonfiction film about my father, archives, the nature of conversation and dealing with unexpected loss. A toy airplane and the filmmaker's deliberate break with the rules of filmmaking become reoccurring themes.
    • For The Time Being Intro Clip
      https://vimeo.com/209196922
    • Still from film (16mm color)
      Still from film (16mm color)
    • Still from film (16mm b & w)
      Still from film (16mm b & w)
    • Still from film (16 mm b +w)
      Still from film (16 mm b +w)
    • Still from film (16 mm b +w)
      Still from film (16 mm b +w)
    • Still from film (16 mm b +w)
      Still from film (16 mm b +w)
    • Still from an animation with archival materials
      Still from an animation with archival materials
    •

    • An Incomplete History

    This installation used text, notes from my father's archive that I installed walls around the room and projections and TVs as mediums to come to terms with my father's untimely death.
    • 1-An Incomplete History.JPG
      1-An Incomplete History.JPG
    • An Incomplete History 3.JPG
      An Incomplete History 3.JPG
    • wall text - An Incomplete History
      wall text - An Incomplete History
      Text rubbings at Skidmore's Case Gallery. This body of work was completed during an the Storytellers Institute Arts Residency
    • An Incomplete History - wall text
      An Incomplete History - wall text
      documentation of a show at Skidmore College's Case Gallery
    •

    • A Note From Home

    A Note From Home is a long-term, participatory project and forthcoming photo book using photography, portraiture, oral history, writing and archives to explore the complexity of family and personal narratives in collaboration with young people who have experience in the foster care system or with homelessness. The images above consist of portraits I shot, collaborative images and images from family archives. Initially funded by the Center for Documentary Studies' Lewis Hine Fellowship, each young person involved in the project produced their own body of work, exploring an aspect of their personal narrative in search of new meanings of home and family. The work explores rites of passage, the strength required to constantly rebuild home, landscape as a form of protection, imagined childhood maps, and the everyday things people carry with them.  
    • Anita
      Anita
      2019, medium format film, archival pigment print
    • Stephanie
      Stephanie
      Stephanie, archival pigment print from medium format film
    • Stephanie M
      Stephanie M
      Stephanie M, archival pigment print from medium format film
    • K'la
      K'la
      K'la archival pigment print from medium format film
    • Mariah
      Mariah
      2019, archival pigment print from medium format negative
    • Anthony
      Anthony
      2019, archival pigment print from medium format negative
    • Dios
      Dios
      2018, archival pigment print from medium format film
    • Alberto
      Alberto
      2018, archival pigment print from medium format film
    • Black Rock Group Show
      Black Rock Group Show
      An installation of five images part of a juried show at the Black Rock Center for the Arts (2019). These images won first place in the show.
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