Bio // Resume

Abbie Reese is an award-winning writer, award-winning photographer, and an oral historian. Her traveling multimedia and photography exhibits have been shown in dozens of solo and group shows, including HotHouse: The International Center for Performance and Exhibition in Chicago. Abbie was an adjunct instructor of photography at the University of Wisconsin, and the artist-in-residence at the Rockford Art Museum. In 2009, Abbie was one of 100 photographers selected for the international juried portfolio event, Review Santa Fe. In 2008, she was one of 50 photographers selected nationally for PhotoAlliance, a juried portfolio review at the San Francisco Art Institute, with her work published in "One World Portfolio Review." She was a Fellow at Columbia University’s 2008 Oral History Research Office Summer Institute, “Oral History, Advocacy, and the Law.” In 2006, Abbie was selected for Rotary International’s Group Study Exchange, and traveled to Germany for a month-long professional development and ambassadorial program. Abbie spent more than a decade working in the media, and from 2003 to 2004 she lived aboard the world’s largest non-governmental hospital ship while it was docked in Sierra Leone, West Africa, a year following a cease fire to the country’s 11-year civil war. She worked in the Communications Department, freelancing for publications around the world, and serving as the media liaison for a BBC News team creating TV and radio reports. In addition to her personal work as an artist, Abbie is Founder of Dust Cloud Media, LLC, which partners with individuals and companies to tell their stories with words, sounds and images. (See www.dustcloudmedia.com.) She is also Founder/President of the Storytelling Trust: farrago vitae, a not-for-profit arts and education organization that documents and preserves stories that might otherwise not be told. (See www.storytellingtrust.org.) The 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization emerged from a community-based oral history and photography project that Abbie spearheaded, Untold Stories: Freeport's African-American History. (See www.untoldstoriesproject.com.) She has traveled in about 40 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and she lives in the unglaciated, Driftless Region of Northwest Illinois.