Reaching Volume I
This ongoing project is a fine art form-based photographic landscape nature study on the ways trees and tree parts physically reach into the above ground spaces in which they live.
The project rose out of deep fascination and wonderment for the forest and with a goal to develop visual acuity with its reaching parts.
Visually or formerly, images fall on a spectrum of simple to complex. Simple formal scenarios, i.e., branches, tree parts or solo trees reaching in from one or more sides of the frame into larger negative spaces, and second, complex formal scenarios, with branches reaching in all directions, almost completely filling up negative spaces, and entering the frame from all sides. I wanted to create formal relationships not dependent on a level horizon or traces of ground, but instead on how each tree part and tree interact with the frame, each other and the sky.
Volume I includes 8"x12" color prints on Hahnemuehle William Turner fine art archival paper with 2" warm off-white mattes inside .75" black walnut frames. See Fine Art Store for print sales and other goodies.
Sensing Currents
There is something mysterious about the ways sunlight affects the senses of humans and plants, how leaves and branches instinctively turn sunward or how humans react to the emotional light of a day's beginning or end. It is fascinating to imagine what plants and trees might experience as their sense organs react to these stimuli. What does a plant sense with the first rays of light in the morning or the last at night? What does touch feel like to a plant? What does rain, wind or even thunder feel like? And what kinds of discourses do these organisms have with one another about these experiences? Contemplating the answers to these questions guided the image making for this series. Using Fujifilm Fujichrome Provia 100 transparencies and playing with the expressive focusing capabilities of an analog 4x5 view camera, I showed the landscape in abstract, vivid and foreign ways. This project was photographed during mornings and late afternoons in Governor's Park, Tallahassee, Florida 2016.
