Extreme Duality, Gallery Show
MILL VALLEY CITY HALL
26 Corte Madera Ave, Mill Valley, CA 94941
Opening Reception: Tuesday, December 7th 2021, 5:30 pm — 7:30 pm
Exhibition running through December 2021
Our public lands represent an extreme duality in perceptions. To some, these are naturally beautiful, ecologically important spaces; to others, they are forbidding, desolate expanses. These black-and-white Californian images explore that balance as we place an ever-growing pressure on our wilderness.
When I chose the name for my Instagram account, Before it Gets Dark, I took inspiration from a John Muir quote: The world is big, and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
Over time, the meaning of that name has changed. When I find myself chasing that golden hour light right before the sun sinks below the horizon, I’m thinking, I need to make this work before it gets dark. But a couple of years ago, I was reading an article in National Geographic called Unplugging the Selfie Generation by Timothy Egan, and it began to take on another significance.
The article explores the way our national parks are perceived by the latest generation to inherit them. As the author recounts a conversation with Jonathan Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service, a couple of paragraphs jumped out at me:
He pointed to a framed picture hanging in his office, one of the iconic views of Grand Teton National Park, bathed in glorious evening light. I’d seen the photo before, had hiked among those very peaks, and still it made me marvel. But when a similar lovely picture was shown to inner-city kids, growing up without a tradition of national park visits, Jarvis had an epiphany.”
It looked scary to them. Empty. Forbidding. Not welcoming. They said, ‘Where are all the people?’ We had the same experience when we brought a group of students from Los Angeles to Death Valley. They wouldn’t get out of the van. The quiet, the pure darkness, unnerved them and threatened them.”
The idea that our wilderness can represent the extreme duality of a beautiful, welcoming natural environment and a dark, intimidating place of danger is a unique aspect of this age. That darkness could grow or subside, but the threat seems real as we put our wilderness under increasing pressure daily.
Through this series of Californian, black-and-white landscapes, I aim to explore that balance while holding the viewer’s attention long enough to ask them if we have something worth preserving.
