Karla Cinquanta is a visual artist from Providence, RI. When she was just 14, her father gave her a 35mm SLR, which launched her life-long passion for photography. Her journey began as high school yearbook photographer then commercial photographer assistant and eventually custom lab printer. She seized every opportunity to hone her craft inside the darkroom as well, endlessly experimenting and producing multiple-negative black & white prints and learning the precision of custom color printing.
Cinquanta’s original, hand-tinted black & white prints have appeared on book jackets of academic publications and are featured in leading photography journals. When photography turned digital, she quickly made the transition from negatives to pixels, and now specializes in digital image design.
Formally trained at the Art Institute of Boston, Cinquanta is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the RI State Council on the Arts, MacDowell, and the Millay Arts Foundation. Her other chosen medium, mosaic design, has garnered international recognition. Her commissioned mosaic portraits have been showcased in a variety of publications and exhibited regionally at art galleries in Boston, Sommerville, Amesbury, Cape Cod, and the Attleboro Arts Museum. Her original mosaic designs are featured in the 2003 art book Mosaic Techniques & Traditions by Sonia King. In 2015, she created original photographic illustrations for the children’s book The Tiny Portrait by Heidi Carla, earning the 2015 Royal Dragonfly Award-first place honors for best photography/illustrations in picture books.
