EXHIBITION DETAILS
(Un)Natural Cycles: Air, Water, Land
October 14 – January 15, 2023
Virtual Reception and Artist Talk: October 27th from 6-7:30 PM MT Sign Up Here
Virtual Portfolio Reviews: October 27th from 1-4:00 PM MT
Jurors Award: Patricia Silva
Jurors Honorable Mentions: Joseph Mougel, Tracy Barbutes, Siru Wen, Jason Lindsey, and Jeffery Becton
Directors Award: Kristin Schnell (Yellow Birds)
Directors Honorable Mentions: Bootsy Holler, Ann Prochilo, Iskkra Johnson
Featured Artists: Seamus Abshire, Paul Adams and Jordan Layton, Tracy Barbutes, Jeffery Becton, Barbara Boissevain, Casey Lance Brown, Matthew Derezinski, Amy Durocher, Lori Feig-Sandoval, Teri Figliuzzi, Gina Gaiser, Leslie Gleim, Christian Gomez, Bootsy Holler, Iskra Johnson, Amy Kaczur, Virginie Kippelen, Daniel Kraus, Meredith Leich, Jason Lindsey, Clark James Mishler, Joseph Mougel, Caroline Nicola, Jason Robert O'Kennedy, Walter Plotnick, Ann Prochilo, Steven Raskin, Lisa Redburn, Susan Richman, Louise Russell, Kristin Schnell, Sarah Schorr, Becca Screnock, E. Wendell Shinn, Patricia Silva, Sabrina Staires, Constance Thalken, Shavit Vos, Sandra Chen Weinstein, Siru Wen, Rusty Weston, Douglas Yates, Tom Young, and Dianne Yudelson
STATEMENT
Jurors’ Statement
When I came across Patricia Silva’s Sea Glitch Punctum Spell, I was caught up in the mystery of an ecosystem we recognize and yet can’t take for granted. The slicing of the scene into extrasensory planes dismantles our world and hints at uncharted potential dimensions.
Tying this body of work into the exhibition’s theme is Silva’s contemplation of how the pandemic has liberated people from the office, enabling them to relocate across oceans, with the resulting impact on climate change. I am especially moved by Silva’s words as the artist visualizes the “landscape’s vanishing lines as an index for nonbinary points of view on my own internal turning points: queerness, emigration, diaspora.”
As in Silva’s uninhabited piece, there were surprisingly few humans in the totality of the entries. As if we’d done enough damage and were banished. The exhibition as a whole seems to ask, Is it already too late? Will these images jolt us, awaken us to sound an alarm? To respond with outrage and protective defiance? Let us hope that we always have nature as a refuge. And that making art is itself always an act of hope and of healing.
My gratitude to Executive Director Hamidah Glasgow for the opportunity to immerse myself in this overwhelming abundance of powerful images, with the hope that you will all find images that speak deeply to you.
JUROR | Elizabeth Cheng Krist
A National Geographic photo editor for over 20 years, Elizabeth Krist is a founding member of the Visual Thinking Collective. She is on the boards of Women Photograph and of the W. Eugene Smith Fund.
