Vija Celmins

Known for: pencil drawings and paintings of ocean surfaces and starfields

Vija Celmins spent years making pencil drawings of the same subjects — ocean surfaces, starfields, desert floors, spider webs — with a patience and attention to detail that required months per image. Her paintings and prints of these subjects, made from photographs, achieve a photographic precision by non-photographic means. She has described herself as interested in the experience of looking itself. She was born in Latvia, fled as a child through Germany, and settled in Indiana with her family as a displaced person.