All posts by pchristian

Ground Truthing, Wanderlusting

Farewell to the Moab Symposium

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In May I attended the final Moab Photography Symposium.  For the last three years I can honestly say the experience, combined with the Terrific Trio workshop in the three days leading up to the larger gathering, has changed my life.  I have been “studying” photography for the last 10 years or so–learning my f-stops and depth of field and composition and photoshop techniques.  But on my first Terrific Trio workshop with Guy Tal, Bruce Hucko and Colleen Miniuk Sperry, I learned what it is to create art with my camera.

We were out on a shoot at a well-known overlook in Canyonlands.  Canyonlands and I have a long history, reaching back to my childhood exploring the then primitive area in my geologist father’s jeep.  

I wasn’t consciously composing or worrying about my camera settings.  I was sitting quietly, camera beside me as I watched the light changing across the landscape.

With a hard rock against my back, supporting me, allowing for rest, my mind focused on the present–the pungent scent of sun baked sage, the sound of the wind in the gnarled branches of the piñon pines, the dust of dry gritty sand on my tongue.  

Suddenly I felt something behind me–not another person or an animal, but a palpable presence.  I turned and there, dancing before a sunlit cliff face was a bare limbed tree.  I could see the tree’s gnarled body, but then it appeared as if it were a shadow cast on the rock and then–the cliff face seems to crack open, with the memory Dad’s stories of the creation of this landscape–of ancient seas, upheaval and the sculpting fingers of wind and water.  I quietly raised my camera and took a single shot.  For me that single shot captured the essence of Canyonlands, both the present and the past.

When I showed the photograph in critique the next day, Guy and Bruce and Colleen did more than look at my photo and murmur their praise.  They experienced it and responded to it.  They even remembered it years later.  In the flood of images we encounter every day, to have my image remain in another person’s memory is a profound experience and helped me realize the purpose of all art–which is to deeply connect to another human being.

“The best teachers always remind us that photography is about connection, about sharing experiences, a means of self-exploration and global discovery, a way to get outside of our own small lives and expand beyond our own limitations.  Perhaps the next time you’re out in the world with your camera you can use all the techniques and aesthetics you’ve learned from your mentors–not to make a great picture, but rather to connect with another human being, heart to heart, through the artwork you are striving so hard to create.” Brooks Jensen

I will be forever grateful to my mentors–Guy, Colleen and Bruce.  You have given me more than you could know.

The Exploritorium

Enter the Exploritorium

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New to Backwoods and Beyond:

The Exploritorium–A process journal for my year long alternative printing project.  

 

Several years ago I did a workshop with Eileen Rafferty and Elizabeth Stone on Alternative Processes where I was introduced to a smorgasbord of photographic printing techniques, including the historic processes of cyanotypes and VanDukes, and more modern possibilities, ranging from image transferring to encaustic.  I was immediately hooked.  The possibility of integrating the subject with the style of presentation opened up a whole new world of exploration for me and I loved the idea of hand crafting unique pieces of art.  Over the next few years I continued my explorations in a number of workshops put on by the Photographers Formulary with such extraordinary teachers as Kerick Kouklis, Dan Burkholder, and Christina Z. Anderson.

This next year I am embarking on a project using salt printing and gum dichromate processes with a portfolio of Yellowstone photographs taken over the years in the wintertime.  Visiting Yellowstone in the winter makes one feel as if you have stepped back in time, so one of the earliest processes–salt printing, will express that historic feeling and combining it with gum dichromate, the earliest color process, will emphasize the unexpected rainbow of colors created by the hot springs.  I am hoping to share my process in this journal as I work over the next  months.

Field Notes, The Backwoods

Icescapes

The last two weeks in Missoula have been unrelentingly cold with inversions trapping the valleys under a veil of dismal grey.  For many people this has been trying–particularly since we are all breathlessly waiting for snow and the beginning of ski season.  But the photographer in me has been rejoicing because the fact that the daytime temperatures never rise above the mid-20s means that the pond and riverbank have been an ever-changing landscape of ice.  The fascinating forms captured by the freezing water are artworks far surpassing what my own imagination could ever conjure up.  

In a workshop at the Photographer’s Formulary with Dan Burkholder, I learned how to use precious metal leafing techniques with prints made on translucent velum.  This creates a modern take on the famous orotones done by Edward S. Curtis in the 19th century west.  

This technique is wonderfully suited to my series of icescapes. A selection of these silver leafed prints are in the current show at the Dana Gallery in Missoula, MT.

 

Field Notes, The Backwoods, The Commonplace Book

The Call of the Wild

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“Talk of mysteries—Think of our life in nature,–daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,–rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?                                                                                                                           H.D. Thoreau

The day after Thanksgiving. Sitting amidst my family last night, I had a sudden realization. I am no longer the center of anyone else’s life. My children grown, my parents gone, and Ted and I both, freed from the focus of raising kids have spun out from the center of family and are each pursuing our own questions and passions. What does this mean, to be freed from that kind of responsibility?The day after Thanksgiving. Sitting amidst my family last night, I had a sudden realization. I am no longer the center of anyone else’s life. My children grown, my parents gone, and Ted and I both, freed from the focus of raising kids have spun out from the center of family and are each pursuing our own questions and passions. What does this mean, to be freed from that kind of responsibility?

I look up from my list of have tos and must dos and watch what’s happening out the window. The antics of a squirrel as it leaps from the bouncing wand of the thinnest branch tips to the birdfeeder. Then a doe, unexpected in my garden, chewing the remains of the cabbage. A glance out the kitchen window reveals the two rabbits that have taken up residence in our mower shed, grazing on the still green grass. One is a deer brown, streaked and splotched with black, giving it a certain derelict air. The other a russet beauty with black tipped ears. With the relentless chores pulling at me to get something accomplished, I almost turn my back on these calls from the wild—but no—not this time.

I don boots and jacket and head to the backwoods. Rather than take my usual circuit, starting with the pond, I wind around the other way, following the rusty, tawny path of leaf litter. A red-tail circles overhead, checking me out. I watch his loops and dives and something flutters to my feet—a long thin feather striped cream and umber.

I make my way into the cushiony moss meadow, which I sometimes refer to as the dying place, since there have been several deer carcasses, and mounds of dove feathers from the hawk’s successful hunts. And yes, gleaming white against the incongruously spring green moss is the jawbone of faun.

Looking toward the river my eye is caught by the sun gold light shimmering on the hills through the cottonwood trunks, pressed between the steely blue of the far mountains and the river. With my eyes fixed on those two colors that speak November, I don’t notice the tips of the antlers sticking above the dry grass not 20’ in front of me. Not until the buck jerks awake, clearly as startled by my presence as I am by his. He rises, stands for just a moment before gracefully leaping the fence. He looks back at me as if to say, “Don’t you wish you could do that?” and then saunters away, secure in the knowledge I can’t.

The hawk circles overhead again. By the time I push my way through the willows to the water, the buck is nowhere to be seen. A heron startles off the bank across the water, it’s pterodactyl form outlined against the pinkening clouds

I find a perfect oval wishing rock, bigger than my palm, with a wide white band of quartz encircling it. As I am contemplating what to wish for, a splash erupts from the river right in front of me. Confused, I glance up to see the ring of water spreading from the center toward the spit where I stand. I look back down at my hand, which still holds the wishing rock. I scan the riverbank looking for someone else, but I am alone.

And then, downstream a small dark brown nose pops out of the water, then a little round head, a V of wake streaming behind. It must hear my delighted gasp, because its body humps up out current and its tail whacks the water , making another resounding splash as it dives below the surface. Walking downriver I watch as it rises and slaps, each time getting more distant until I can no longer see or hear it.

I could however hear the cacophonous sound of a huge flock of geese, doing their calligraphic flight formations, long stings of them flying back and forth, as if stitching the clouds together into a story.

This. This is what I want. This time to “daily be shown matter, to come in contact with it,–rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks!” Time to answer the call of the wild, and to stitch my experiences together with writing and photography.

I grasp the wishing rock in my hand, but instead of a wish, I whisper a commitment to myself. To take the freedom I now have from being the center of other people’s lives, and to become the center of my own life. To make my art, not something I do only in stolen moments, but the real focus of everything.

I throw the wishing rock far out to the center of the current and watch as it creates silvery rings which spread in all directions.

Field Notes, Wanderlusting

Plein Air Writing

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Last month the Dana Gallery in Missoula held their annual Paintout.  Several local writers were invited to accompany the artists into the field and write in response to the scene.  I was fortunate to join Robert Moore in the Lavelle Creek valley.  The paintings and writings are on display at the gallery through August.

 

 

 

 

Word Painting 

Begin with an underpainting. Great gravelly shores of a lake tens of thousands of years gone. Dusky grey with thin soils that lie heaped to the horizon line. Begin to sketch in the grasses whose network of roots hold that soil from gathering up into the winds that rake this slope.

Pull the individual stems from the plain brown hillside. Mix words on your palette to give definition to those grasses. Timothy and fescue, tawney and ecru, tufted hairgrass and sedge, raffia and buff. Struggle to give the right shape to your words so feathery seed heads come alive and dance on the page as they are shimmying now in the breeze. Look closer and see the greens that are woven into the tapestry. Sagey lupine heavy with furred pods and dusty verdigris balsam root drying in the searing sun. Try to capture the rustle of leaves and stems as some unseen creature darts among the safe cover of grasses, while overhead a feathered form sails across the clear blue sky.

Upslope, the burnt umber shadow of the single pine pools from its base and crawls uphill. How to render the ponderosa? Not spired like spruce or leggy like lodgepole. Words must spread in great boles and boughs, tufted with long needles. Pull the vanilla scent from the puzzled bark onto the page. Try to find the right values for your words. Suddenly the rock nestled at the foot of the ponderosa resolves itself into the hunched form of a wild turkey, escaping the midday sun.

Let the image of the turkey pull you into your own cool shade. Hunker yourself into the shadow of the serviceberry bush that softens the roadcut where you sit, dabbing letter into word into image.

You read the scene you have painted on the page. You like the way the colors mix and blend, the shading that has given it depth, and pulled you into the picture.

A branch dangles just above your eyes, heavy with small hard berries. Know they will ripen with time into something that will nourish you, the way all this foliage is transforming sunlight into life.

The Cabinet of Curiosities

Bone Spirits

 

Basho, the 15th century Japanese Haiku artist’s first journal begins:

bleached bones

on my mind, the wind pierces

my body to the heart

 

Our bones not only give structure to our bodies and permit movement, they contain our very life blood. Bone marrow produces more than a trillion red blood cells every day.

Throughout history bones have been sacred in many cultures. They are venerated, used in rituals and divination. There was a belief in 16th century Europe that bones revealed the relative nature of things, and the hidden affinities between all living creatures. The Chinese congi for bones also means deep truth.

Bones tell the stories of the lives they once supported.

And for many cultures, they contain the spirit of the dead and can therefore be reanimated. This belief was especially common among people in northern Eurasia, as well as parts of Asia and can also be found in the myths of Germany, Africa, South America, Oceania and Australia as well as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

I often come upon bones on my rambles through the woods and it always inspires a deep sense of curiosity of wonder. Who was this? How did they die? How did they live? Piecing these scattering of bones together, they come alive again in my imagination. Examined closely and isolated, it’s as if the individual bones, with their vast array of shapes and textures come to life under the eye of my camera as well.

My Bone Spirits are part of my show currently on display at The Montana Natural History Center through the end of March.

 

Reading Nature, The Cabinet of Curiosities

Cabinets of Curiosity

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Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Wonders)

Modern day museums evolved from the Cabinets of Curiosity that originated as far back as the 1500’s and reached their peak of popularity in the Victorian Era. They were collections of extraordinary objects that categorized and told stories about the wonders and oddities of the natural world.

I have always been a collector. As Georgia O’Keefe said, “ I have picked flowers where I found them—have picked up sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood …When I found the beautiful white bones on the desert I picked them up and took them home too…I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.”

Working in the Morton J. Elrod Collection at the University of Montana I had the rare opportunity to work with specimens that dated back to Elrod’s original collections.  At the same time I was reading George Dennison’s biography of Elrod and his scientific curiosity and sense of wonder in nature became a part of my own vision.  I hope the three curiosity cabinets I created from my experiences as Artist in Residence at the Montana Natural History Center inspire that same sense of wonder in you.

 

Articulating a Story

Leslie Marmon Silko’s story Skeleton Fixer has been the guiding myth through my career as a writer, photographer and book artist. Gathering ideas, experiences and insights I strive to fit them all together to tell a story, a story that may intrigue, inspire and resonate with my “readers.”

 

Haunted by Owls

Last January I came across an owl that had just been hit by a car. I brought it to the museum at the University and was thrilled when Libby Beckman, the curator allowed me to be present as she prepared it as a speciman. Before she began she carefully checked it for molting, then separated the feathers on its abdomen to find the patch of bare skin where birds use their body heat to incubate their eggs. Opening up the owl’s stomach we discovered the half digested remains of a dove, whose own stomach contained the seeds it had just eaten. Removing the eye, I was amazed to see the long bony tube that encased it which protects the long rods they use to see in the dark.

Swan Song

The articulation of bones to create a skeleton has always held a fascination for me, so I was very excited when I had the opportunity to watch Larry DePute work on the trumpeter swan. The first time I met Larry he was making a magic wand from a bone for a baby shower, and I knew I had found a soul mate. Seeing the hollow structure of the bones that allows these birds such grace in flight and looking into the elliptical curve of it’s windpipe that gives it it’s distinctive call was a revelation.

All are on view at the Montana Natural History Center, along with my Bone Spirit series through the end of March.