current SHOW
Above image: Detail, "A Crossing #2"
PEGGY REEVES: "CROSSINGS
MARCH 1 - 31, 2019
The vast and dangerous terrain traversed by the “caravan” of migrants seeking refuge on the southern border of the United States forms the core of this recent series of works. Though there is an absence of human form, the obstacles of land and nature are barriers enough for the crossing to safety. The landscape, though abstract, suggests a journey of difficult navigation across the expanse of the picture plane.
The works in this show began as chemigrams, also a crossing or crossover, in a sense, of painting and photography. The process, like painting, uses liquid or viscous materials (resists) applied by any number of different delivery methods to photographic (silver gelatin paper) in or out of a darkroom. Contact with photographic chemistry over time slowly deteriorates the resists and we are left with a record of their slow demise by that chemistry. At its final resting place, when the resists are totally gone, what remains is a visual record, a history of the work’s own making. For Reeves, the process itself is a metaphor for natural and man-made forces on the environment.
Reeves is treading some uncharted territory in the field of cameraless photography. While exploring the materiality of the chemigram medium, she has found that experimentation is still an adventure of working in the studio/lab with new resists, chemistry and papers. In the course of exploration there is the discovery of processes that have led, in this series, to imagery that is both formally dense and emotionally empathic.
PEGGY REEVES: "CROSSINGS
MARCH 1 - 31, 2019
The vast and dangerous terrain traversed by the “caravan” of migrants seeking refuge on the southern border of the United States forms the core of this recent series of works. Though there is an absence of human form, the obstacles of land and nature are barriers enough for the crossing to safety. The landscape, though abstract, suggests a journey of difficult navigation across the expanse of the picture plane.
The works in this show began as chemigrams, also a crossing or crossover, in a sense, of painting and photography. The process, like painting, uses liquid or viscous materials (resists) applied by any number of different delivery methods to photographic (silver gelatin paper) in or out of a darkroom. Contact with photographic chemistry over time slowly deteriorates the resists and we are left with a record of their slow demise by that chemistry. At its final resting place, when the resists are totally gone, what remains is a visual record, a history of the work’s own making. For Reeves, the process itself is a metaphor for natural and man-made forces on the environment.
Reeves is treading some uncharted territory in the field of cameraless photography. While exploring the materiality of the chemigram medium, she has found that experimentation is still an adventure of working in the studio/lab with new resists, chemistry and papers. In the course of exploration there is the discovery of processes that have led, in this series, to imagery that is both formally dense and emotionally empathic.