Falling Inward — A Time of Existential Unease
My exhibit “Falling Inward” reflected a time shaped by anxiety and accident, as well as the many found moments of comfort in the natural beauty of the Finger Lakes. The collection included work during the COVID-19 Pandemic from 2020 to 2021. I exhibited the collection at Wood Library in the Ewing Family Community Room and Gallery, October 2 to November 12, 2021.
The photo-composites in the show were without question shaped by the existential unease of the times. I sought to express a sense of foreboding and distress, not only because of the pandemic, but from an awareness that an accelerated change in the global climate would threaten humanity. Its impact was already leading to increased human migrations with predictable destabilizing social and political effects. It was also a period of social unrest following the murder of George Floyd. And too, I was entering my seventies—in a sense, entering my own end-times. Yet still, I found solace and expression in the beauty of autumn’s wild radiance and winter’s austere abstractions, which I shared in this collection.
In her essay, “In Plato’s Cave,” Susan Sontag quipped, “Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” If that’s true, it’s because we strive to share not only ‘what we see,’ but ‘how we see’ and ‘how we feel.’ I believe the light falls inward and we illuminate the world. The myriad connections formed in experience are what shape our expressions in art, whether we’re conscious of them or not.
