Temporality
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Opening Reception July 20th, 2024 4pm-6pm Show runs from - July 20th, 2024 - October 12th, 2024 Artist Talk 10/12/2024 (4:30pm) |
(Click above image for press kit)
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Artist - Sherry Insley
Statement
My current work is a rumination on time, using mixed media and light sensitive materials in an attempt to document states of impermanence. Photographic images can serve as witness and documents of record, as well as manipulate and influence time. My interests lie in photography’s attempt to order and preserve ephemeral subjects, such as memory or the passage of time, and the “evidence” of these experiences. In an age where virtually every action and event is recorded and archived, I am intrigued with slowing down and examining this process. I am interested in the physical nature of photography’s relationship to time, and this inquiry consists of several bodies of work that address this concept. Large scale black and white digital photography, video and sound installation, and historic photographic processes such as lumen printing, cyanotypes and anthotypes. The Ebb series asks what does it mean to use a tool that documents and preserves, to create images that intentionally disappear? Lumen printing, a historic alternative printing process, is ephemeral in nature and the image will degrade over time. Conversely, in the Ghost Forest series, the image persists in its reproduction, while the subjects themselves are deteriorating into near disappearance.The Lake Montebello and Temporality series captures the fleeting effect of a temperature inversion over the lake and a city park. The environment is completely transformed and the viewer can find this both calming and/or disorienting. Threshold and Untethered further examine these questions by playing with the viewer's sensory response to the images and sound.
Specific Projects
The Ghost Forest series is an ongoing photographic documentation begun in the summer of 2022. Depicting the emergence of ghost forests along the mid-Atlantic coasts, particularly in the DelMarVa area. When salt water is pushed inland into freshwater ecosystems due to storms, rising sea level, and climate change, the salinity of the soil becomes too high. The Atlantic White Cedar is particularly susceptible to the high salinity, and is the first species to die. The skeletal white trunks standing against lush landscape are sounding the alarm of a changing climate. This stark contrast is both beautiful and disconcerting, creating visual and literal gaps in the density of the forest. My hope for this project is to bring visibility to this pernicious consequence of climate change. The large scale photographs are dramatic and meant to hold the viewer’s attention with their size and contrast. I expect to expand this series into a large body of work that calls attention to this situation and asks the viewer to reflect on the loss of tree species, farmable soil, increased flooding and climate change overall. I hope to engage with people who are aware of the more overt dangers of climate change, but may not have knowledge of this specific consequence. The communities that live, work and visit our coastal areas may pass ghost forests regularly, but may not realize what they are indicative of.
My work with alternative processes such as watergrams, lumen printing and anthotypes, further examines the relationship of photographic images with time and impermanence. Watergrams use conventional darkroom materials, but are a camera-less, analog technique that captures the vibrations and patterns of moving water with only light and sensitized photographic paper. This alternative process is unique and cannot be fully replicated like other photographic printing processes. The movement of the water creates abstract patterns and shapes as it reflects the light passing over the light sensitive paper.
The Threshold series captures temperature inversions over the ocean that create a sense of being unmoored due to the obscured horizon. It is an absence of footing, and a feeling of disorientation. This atmospheric phenomenon and feeling of uncertainty are temporary, as the horizon vanishes and then reappears. In Untethered a sound and image installation, I am revisiting images from Threshold, and replacing the disappearing visual information with sound. Using low frequencies, reverberations and higher pitched tones, I aim to influence the viewer's sensory response to the images. This too is a temporal state of being as the images and sound fade in and out as the video loops.
The Ghost Forest series is an ongoing photographic documentation begun in the summer of 2022. Depicting the emergence of ghost forests along the mid-Atlantic coasts, particularly in the DelMarVa area. When salt water is pushed inland into freshwater ecosystems due to storms, rising sea level, and climate change, the salinity of the soil becomes too high. The Atlantic White Cedar is particularly susceptible to the high salinity, and is the first species to die. The skeletal white trunks standing against lush landscape are sounding the alarm of a changing climate. This stark contrast is both beautiful and disconcerting, creating visual and literal gaps in the density of the forest. My hope for this project is to bring visibility to this pernicious consequence of climate change. The large scale photographs are dramatic and meant to hold the viewer’s attention with their size and contrast. I expect to expand this series into a large body of work that calls attention to this situation and asks the viewer to reflect on the loss of tree species, farmable soil, increased flooding and climate change overall. I hope to engage with people who are aware of the more overt dangers of climate change, but may not have knowledge of this specific consequence. The communities that live, work and visit our coastal areas may pass ghost forests regularly, but may not realize what they are indicative of.
My work with alternative processes such as watergrams, lumen printing and anthotypes, further examines the relationship of photographic images with time and impermanence. Watergrams use conventional darkroom materials, but are a camera-less, analog technique that captures the vibrations and patterns of moving water with only light and sensitized photographic paper. This alternative process is unique and cannot be fully replicated like other photographic printing processes. The movement of the water creates abstract patterns and shapes as it reflects the light passing over the light sensitive paper.
The Threshold series captures temperature inversions over the ocean that create a sense of being unmoored due to the obscured horizon. It is an absence of footing, and a feeling of disorientation. This atmospheric phenomenon and feeling of uncertainty are temporary, as the horizon vanishes and then reappears. In Untethered a sound and image installation, I am revisiting images from Threshold, and replacing the disappearing visual information with sound. Using low frequencies, reverberations and higher pitched tones, I aim to influence the viewer's sensory response to the images. This too is a temporal state of being as the images and sound fade in and out as the video loops.
Biography
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Sherry Insley is a mixed media artist working primarily in photography, video, printmaking, and artist books. Her current work Ghost Forest documents the emergence of this phenomena along the Mid Atlantic coastal areas, and the evolving landscape due to climate change. She utilizes light sensitive materials in both historic and contemporary ways to document and preserve these investigations. Interested in the physicality of photography, other recent works included in Temporality, explore how image making can manipulate and influence the experience of time. Sherry Insley is a 2023 MAEA Art Educator of the Year nominee. She received the 2023 Juror’s Choice award for Maryland Federation of the Arts American Landscapes Exhibit. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from UMBC and MICA. Currently, she is an instructor at Carver Center of the Arts, a nationally recognized audition based magnet public high school. She can be found in Baltimore City most of the time, and at the salt marsh the rest of the time.
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