ARTIST TALK : 3:00pm Saturday, April 13

RECEPTION: 4:00-7:00pm, Saturday, April 13

Featuring photographic prints, artist’s books and canvases.

The work draws on their three recent projects: Palus (2021), Grounded Glass (2022), and Decomposure (2023-24). All three place-based projects are rooted in the lower Columbia Pacific region, with a focus on a protected Sitka spruce swamp.

The team has spent three years observing the wetland through outdoor installations, time-based processes and alternative photographic techniques.

Decomposure documents the interrelated processes of growth and decay. The photographs and canvases in the series record the strange and beautiful patterns that manifest in the natural process of decomposition. Activated by the swamp, contextualized by forested settings and embellished with added color, these uneasy compositions speak to perceived aesthetic and biological value.

Grounded Glass presents a series of photographs that focus on the muddy matter in the swamp’s tidal flow. After allowing the swamp to build up layers of caked mud on glass plates, the artists borrowed from the early cliché verre technique to create windows through which elements of the landscape appear in their resulting photographs.

Palus (Latin, “swamp”) is a meditation on the swamp’s liquid respiration as the waters rise and fall each day. A series of photographs document the Torii Tidal Screens, one of the team’s multiple outdoor installations. The 4’ x 5’ canvas screens served as focal points for daily observation, registering the varying levels of the tide as the swamp water marked the fabric.

As a celebration of a quintessentially Pacific Northwest coastal ecosystem, the exhibition is being presented in conjunction with Earth Day. The exhibition opens on Saturday, April 13, with an artist talk at 3pm and a reception from 4–7pm.