Lost

Comment

Comment by julie keller on October 19, 2012 at 9:21am

i second what Kristen said. The Vermont show should be a big injection of positive energy because your work is so expressive.  this one in particular is full of metaphors for the viewer + strong visual elements from frame to frame.  i was born in the Kansas plains where the endless landscape & every changing skies become one & where any structure that interrupts that becomes a special focus, so these are particularly nostalgic to me.

Comment by Clair Dunn on October 18, 2012 at 1:46pm

Kristen - I've just come of a complete hiatus of any creative work which lasted for two years while I was selling the homestead and moving and then a year of slow and painful recovery. Thanks to friends, the juices are beginning to flow a bit.

Comment by Resident Curator on October 18, 2012 at 1:00pm

Hi Clair,

I was hoping you still actively looked at the site...I realize these images were posted a while back.  But they're just as haunting today.  Congratulations on your upcoming show- I hope the works get the positive attention they deserve.

Kristen

Comment by Clair Dunn on October 18, 2012 at 5:20am

Kristen -- thanks for your perceptive comments. I appreciate it. All the more so as I have a show opening at the end of this month in Woodstock, Vermont! Your timing is impeccable.

Comment by Resident Curator on October 17, 2012 at 1:28pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

Lost strikes me as a surprisingly abstract image.  Aside from the direct narrative of the lone dilapidated barn sinking into the ground, it has an isolated, unearthly silver tint.  The grayish tonality looks like graphite with its faintly metallic luster. Perhaps the photograph was created with a small amount of solarization?  The ground is just close enough in value to the sky that the structure floats into oblivion.  It teeters in a precarious matter, as though it’s about to collapse under its weight at any moment.  But what I don’t read into is the actual ground, or landscape.  While the white horizontal line of the foliage cutting across the horizon keeps it from becoming completely detached, it does (successfully) get lost.  It’s as though the architecture was forsaken by its own environment, if not human hand.  One More Winter has a similarly ghostly quality, but the tighter cropping of the subject keeps it anchored in the space. The deeper contrast of value gives it a stronger surreal effect, as the dramatic surging sky suggests an unseen force at bay.  The images are beautiful in their tragic certainty, for the images are on the brink of becoming completely erased.