(Nature In) Lockdown Exhibition: Ocean Totems

Still life of part of an Horseshoe Crab with seaweed. Horseshoe crabs are integral to medical science and also a threatened species.

Strands of seaweed, horseshoe crabs, shells, broken glass–ocean and human debris–the viscosity of salt water teeming with life–ebb and flow. When animals left the ocean for land, they took the sea with them. Our veins carry the same mixture of sodium, potassium and calcium as sea water. The ocean is our origin.

My hands forage for what the sea gives. I create prints to express its marvels.

A few of my palladium prints that I created from camera-less negatives of these sea fragments are part of an online exhibition https://fayddigital.com/Nature-in-lockdown published by this online magazine which works at the intersection of art, design and the environment.

Our Plant-Human Connection

I hold this print up to the light to view the translucent Gampi paper used to print this Iris with palladium.

My artwork embraces our embeddedness in the natural world. With my fingers CARRESSING an Iris, like a honeybee seeking nectar, I see its forms. I rotate the Iris this way and that way to create with my enlarger camera-less 16X20 inch negatives. For me the IRIS is a landscape, an ecosystem in constant becoming, a landscape of transcendence.

I print my negatives with palladium, using sunlight to expose the thin, translucent gampi paper. As I look at one of my prints titled IRIS GEOMETRY, I see how the palladium emulsion is absorbed to reveal the depth of the image.