Project Statements

Perception

gaze upon the flower
luminous from the light

conversing with the shadow

 are they the same
are they apart

In the Presence of Plants

I’ve been learning to tend a garden that was planted two years ago. As a new gardener I’ve been learning the names of the plants and how to take care of them. As I’ve been doing the basic weeding over the spring, summer, and fall I’ve become intrigued with the forms and textures of the plants. These are some of my favorites.

Outlook

“Outlook” presents landscapes both personal and communal. Through the intertwining of light and composition we can recognize what the familiar has to offer. The powerful color of Chris Plunkett’s oil paintings and the atmospheres of Vicki McKenna’s black and white photographic prints celebrate the commonplace. They ask you to forego the preconditioned expectations of scenic grandeur and uncover interest in the everyday.

I present photographs from three projects of personal landscapes, both natural and developed. The projects are united by a common thread of scale. Encompassing a natural field of view, the images are relatable. It is easy to envision being there. However, each project is motivated by a different underlying emotion—nostalgia, contentment, or humor. A print is the final expression of the image that I’ve conceived when taking the photograph, and I view the craftsmanship involved with printing to be as important as the original composition of the photograph. I chose to print these images in black and white using the platinum/palladium process because I want them to be focused on form and texture. Since we’re accustomed to seeing the world represented in color, a black and white image is a step away from obvious reality, thus encouraging the viewer to look more closely. The platinum/palladium process is an historic, hand-crafted process that results in an image with a long dynamic range and subtle mid-tones.

At the Edge

These images are portraits of the places that have captivated me.  Our world is defined by dynamic processes at the boundaries between fluid earth, solid earth, and biosphere. The processes can be chemical or physical and the transitions abrupt or gradual; obvious or subtle. Varying over scales of distance and time the perspectives associated with the different process are intriguing.  I’m drawn to the complexity of the landscapes sculped by these processes. While the scales in these landscapes vary from inches to tens of feet all have a feeling of intimacy.

Annals of a Future World

These images are meant as harbingers from the future. They present the intertwining of ocean and shore environments as sea level rises. My selection of locations to photograph is informed by maps of projected sea level rise of 6 feet, a possibility by 2100. The mapping is visualized online by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

 Each image is a montage of two or more photographs. I have merged one photograph representing the current environment with other photographs representing a possible future. In the final montage the juxtaposition of time, before and after, is implicit. The composite image is not meant to be a scientific thesis, but a metaphor for a possible result of climate change. In some images it is easy to identify the elements of the individual photographs. In others, the blending of photographs creates an image that almost seems realistic. The ambiguities of scale and detail in the montage are intended to create a sense of discontinuity or unease. This unease mimics the way that we experience the current changes in climate. These changes are discoverable to greater and lesser degrees, and we are unsettled because we find it difficult to separate weather from climate; daily variation from long-term change. The world around us is ephemeral, and we must accept that. Our choice is whether to continue to be the agents of change at a disturbingly historic rate.