Exhibition: Nature's Notations: Photogenic Drawings, Photographs, & Mixed-Media by James Hajicek & Carol Panaro-Smith, Terry Husebye, and Mayme Kratz

Location: Etherton Gallery
135 S. Sixth Avenue

Hours: 11-5 Tuesday - Saturday 11-7 Thursday

Dates: September 7 - November 6, 2004

Reception: Saturday, September 11th, 7-10 p.m.

Contact: Terry Etherton, Jerre Johnston, 520/624-7370


Nature's Notations is an exhibition of works by artists who evoke a pictorial language based on the myriad possibilities of form and content gleaned from nature. Organic, found-object forms and the observation of the Southwestern landscape are emphasized in subject matter that requires one to see near, far, and in-between - those notations of color, rarity, and beauty that comprise the elusive nature of things.

James Hajicek & Carol Panaro-Smith Conceptually based in the elemental structuring inherent in the medieval philosophy of alchemy, Hajicek and Panaro-Smith's works result from an ongoing artistic collaboration that utilizes one of the earliest processes from the history of photography known as photogenic drawing. This process was William Henry Fox Talbot's name for the results of his first camera-less photographic process announced in 1839 at the advent of photography. Starting with organic matter placed on paper that is hand-coated with light sensitive chemicals Hajicek and Panaro-Smith then expose the arranged forms to sunlight.

Working with basic forms of earth or sea vegetation that have a large portion of their structure below the earth or the surface of the sea, allows for "an exploration of the mystery, the magic, and the sacredness, one finds as one approaches the source of any illuminating process - not unlike the ancient art of alchemy when viewed…as a metaphorical system for 'transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit."

The images that result combine physical and optical elements that result in the transformation from object to image depending on the chemistry of the organic material and the duration and intensity of the light. These unique 'organic artifacts' continue to transform with the development of rich surface patinas, from incandescent bronze and gold to verdurous, woodsy greens that shift when held to the light.
In addition to imagery comprised of singular forms (daikon radishes and sea kelp) Hajicek and Panaro-Smith incorporate collaged elements like diagrammatic images of maps and scientific illustrations that they call composites. With this conscious reworking of existing material the collaborative couple recall the composite imagery of Max Ernst who invented this working procedure. The expressive properties of collage hinge the physical properties of the alchemical moment with the illimitable metaphoric present. These simultaneously stable, yet fleeting images speak to serendipity, transmutation, mystery, and "the ruling master of all - the ultimate impermanence of everything."

Terry Husebye's Eschewing the nineteenth-century view of the sublime landscape, Husebye's images are less celebratory of the beauty of nature than the great environmental photographs of Ansel Adams and others whose dramatization of spectacular wilderness landscapes suggest a more agreeable past. The land, "the emblem of everything," is manifested in many stylistic tendencies from conventional landscape photography- grand, ideal and scenic to the pragmatic and didactic concerns of the nineteen century expeditionary photographs, to postmodern photo-activists who question and confront the ramifications of human occupancy.

Husebye's photographs from his Octotillo Flat series speak to the abstraction of the camera and disorienting perspective of the picture plane. Elevation serves as a compositional device, enabling him to fill the frame with shifting topographic patterns that recall the chaos and logic of figure ground relationships inherent in abstract expressionist painting. Husebye's understated style is directed more toward documenting our changing perceptions of the landscape as it reflects a sense of view and of place. Devoid of ecological or social lesson these conscientiously flat images, arrange our sense of sight. The positioning of the camera reveals what is outside the scene itself, illustrating our inhabitation of different perceptual worlds asking us to consider what is retinal and what is perceived.

Mayme Kratz's work, both paintings and sculpture, have always referenced the transience of things -the passage from one reality in life to another. Using polyester casting as a medium Kratz enshrines fragments of nature in various configurations of resin, from tiny crystal-like balls to blocks that form "garden houses" and "garden walls." In her paintings, beeswax, resin, and cactus oil seal in roots and cicada wings, a lizard, black widow eggs, and poppy seedpods. The interplay of oil-overlays and textured surfaces works to dematerialize the nature metaphor creating a current between light and matter.
In addition to using polyester-resin casting as a medium to form sculptural casings for found fragments of nature, Kratz has also used glass. In past works entitled Beyond the Fire, Kratz's mixed-media pieces embedded the elemental forms of nature in the alchemical ritual of glass worked warm and molten. Kratz's work is about the enchantment of process, be it planting a garden or working with glass and resin in combination with organic materials where the circumstances of the unpredictable occur regularly.
The poetics of her process involve the desire to fix the transitory in a stable image and that desire becomes the subject of her imagery. The appreciation of transience and the concern to rescue the elusive for eternity is one of the strongest impulses in allegory. Frozen ephemera -bees, butterfly wings, nests, seeds and roots, the skull of a red-tail hawk, are stand-ins for dissembling transition and our fragile connections to nature and to others.
Kratz's reoccurring remnants of nature lodged beneath the surface of her veneered casings create a suggestive distancing, the integument playing against the textured surfaces and explicit nature of the organic matter. Her poetics are realized in the attempt to rectify the events of change, with the remains of nature that are lifted out of a continuum and suspended in time. The memory of things held in suspended animation urges us toward the narrative of desire and the unattainable, the instant and the eternal.