Almost Gone

‘Almost Gone’ is a meditation on process. Materials are at the heart of my visual thinking where tactility, light, form, time, place, and what is held beneath the surfaces are front and center. The ‘Almost Gone’ series continues my work of creating narratives and storytelling through the process of craft, using cyanotype as the medium and reclamation, reimagining, restoration, redemption and hope as motivations. The individual works result from “mining” segments of discarded, incomplete or unfinished cyanotypes using photographic aspect ratios as the framing device. Each segment is selected singularly without an end in mind. Through trial and error, segments are combined, creating relationships, new forms and conversations bearing deeper meanings. This reimagining provides the viewer with moments across the surface of the grids, slowing their gaze through the traces, objects, and visual connections. The order implied by the formal matrix structure belies the underlying randomness, uncertainty and serendipity inherent in the creation of cyanotypes… and living a life. Close inspection uncovers lens-based images lodging the human experience in the narrative. These people are my ancestors although most are unknown to me. The melding of abstraction and narratives as the cyanotype segments are combined expands how we can consider our world and that beyond. There is a push-pull between intention and intuition in this body of work, where process leads the way. This process of craft and making formal, visual sense in the compositions is also a process of creating narratives about life, eternity and hope.