Lumens & Currents reviewed in the Austin Chronicle
essays and photographs on Phenomenology & Photography
Electric Blue Flowers is part of the In Focus exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum. Curated by Joshua Chuang of NY Public Library, Rebecca Senf and April Watson.
On My Mind, Again at Southwest School of Art
installation view
grasses and weeds
behind the back fence
an image that returns in me
tall, lean
shards of light
grow
in as many as the fourth dimension
into 30 years later
their lives emerge
opening
clearing
space
Electric Blue Flowers is in!
I’m especially excited about this project because it includes my writings and images together for the first time.
*Thanks City of Austin for funding it, and fluent~collaborative for sponsoring it.
‘Post Hudson’ at Frontispiece Hudson
An exhibition of photographs organized by Colby Bird at Frontispiece Hudson in Coxsackie, NY (August 2016). Theatre is a project exploring the spaces between internal and external experience through the undersides of canopies presented as cosmic.
Inner Outer Space of a Tree, 24 x 24 inches, film photography
‘In the Space of Summer’, Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta
in the space of summer
Elizabeth Chiles, Karen Elizabeth Cleveland, and Olivia Valentine
August 5 – September 10, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, August 5, 7:00 pm
whitespec, 814 Edgewood Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30307
Elizabeth Chiles (from Austin, TX), Karen E. Cleveland (from Boone, NC) and Olivia Valentine (from Chicago, IL) met at Hambidge during their fellowships in the summer of 2014. The three began a dialogue as they saw overlapping interests in ideas and work. In the Space of Summer includes work that investigates their experiences at Hambidge of the landscape as a place of spiritual renewal and resource, and also as an architecture to both marvel at and look through.
Chiles’ work is made observing mimicry and patterning in nature and collaging images together to create works in celebration of the natural world and the human place within it. Sacred geometry, weaving, Rorschach, architecture and the margins of perception are areas that define the final images. The pieces in this show are composites of situations and experiences Chiles had in the Hambidge landscape, and were particularly inspired by the richness of the temperate rainforest.
Cleveland’s work explores the body’s intimate relationship and silent conversation with nature. Works investigate fleeting moments of belonging to slants of sunlight, the fecund earth aroma of North Georgia and other unseen energy thriving below the surface of the forest. Her drawings represent the moment of connection and surrender, where boundaries between Self and the natural world drop. Her work touches on her Cherokee heritage, and experiences in the Hambidge landscape and Rabun Gap area.
Valentine is showing a new large-scale lace piece, based on the windows of her studio at Hambidge. Created through labor-intensive weaving, the triptych speaks to the specificity of the windows in her space as well as larger ideas of boundaries and movement between physical and psychological spaces.
‘Over Time’ nominated for best solo exhibition
2015-16 Austin Critics Table.
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes-
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Cloud Appreciation Society in the New York Times
In short, clouds exist in a realm where the physical and metaphysical touch. “We look up for answers,” Pretor-Pinney says. Article here