Openings Connecting: local color

Saturday, September 26, 2009

local color

back in an orchard again~~ take me home country roads. childhood memories. places to "run away" to, hide out, pout, find some peace and still make it home for dinner.

not only a good year for flowers, apples too. perhaps i haven't looked closely in a long time, but this seems overly bountiful ... laden...strong branches holding the wealth. could it be the chocolate fumes from down the road?

4 comments:

layersSeptember 26, 2009 at 8:56 AM
surrounded by apple orchards, beautiful flowers AND a chocolate factory? heaven...
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BeaSeptember 26, 2009 at 9:45 AM
I love apple trees. Looks like it was a good year for these trees.
We have some but they seem to only want to put out apples every other year. :)Bea
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Caterina GiglioSeptember 26, 2009 at 10:09 AM
oh yes, my memories as a child too, climbing apple trees and daydreaming and making things in tree forts! sigh...
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Renee HowellSeptember 27, 2009 at 2:11 PM
yep, my memories, too. escape to the outside. far away in the fields. sky above. crows caw. hawks playing with the wind currents.

thanks for the trip back to green, red, blue
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FOUR DIRECTIONS/FOUR VISIONS: Two Graces: First showing for me, JUNE 3, 2011

With no directions home, I found Taos in the late 60s. It felt like home immediately. It still does. I know this sentiment is familiar to countless others.

The mountain stopped me in my tracks, and I stayed for several years. Since that time, I circle back annually.

To me, that circle is symbolic of this body of work at Two Graces. This is a time in my life when I've been fortunate enough to experiment with art making. Not surprisingly, I found myself drawn back to the images in the Ektachrome slides that I'd taken in the early 80s of Chaco Canyon, the San Francisco de Asis Church, dusty roads, and the ever changing skies of Northern New Mexico. The spirit of this adobed land lingers in my core and manifests itself within these works.

This past Michigan winter was spent creating enlarged negatives from my thirty year old slides, pulling part of my past into the present via today's tools of scanner and computer. Using traditional silver-gelatin darkroom processes, these resurrected and modified negatives acquired a new life. The majority of these prints are the result of this mediated reincarnation.

The smaller images took me into photographic processes from the mid-1800s. These handmade platinum/palladium prints are created coating vellum, for translucency, with these metal salts and exposing them to ultraviolet light. They are then bathed in the alchemy of the darkroom. The tonal qualities are unique in each print. Finally, 24k gold is layered to the backs of the prints, emanating the warmth, glow, and depth of these beloved places.