Joan Fitzsimmons: Into What World?
Into What World? is a solo exhibition by Joan Fitzsimmons and a personal investigation into landscape as a place of dreams and imagination. It consists of selections from three of her photographic series called The Woods, Blue Moon, and Plant Life.
I have walked as long as I can remember. My Father would gather me, and my siblings, and we would walk for miles. We would walk to our grandparents' home. In summers, we walked here, in the Michigan woods, in search of evidence of past histories. When I walk, I dream. I don't start with that intent. I just want to move, but my mind moves with my body. It moves in time to places of memory and imagination.
My early landscape work began with a walk in the woods, a place for me, of both fear and fantasy. Some of the fantasy was Disneyesque, some took a dark turn. The Woods, my resulting series, was inspired by my experience of frequently being lost therein. It invited new formal challenges. In an attempt to create a sense of the dense environment, I broke from the traditional small photographic rectangle, choosing to respond to the vastness of the woods with the use of scale. Hand-made photograms speak to imagined creatures, The lines created by the spare branches resemble the flow of gesture drawings. Their intricate weaving constructs a tightly knit interior space.
Thoughts turned from the earth to the sky in the Blue Moon series. I never knew what a blue moon was. I loved the song. I knew the phrase, 鈥淥nce in a blue moon鈥�. A few years ago, a blue moon occurred, a fairly rare occurrence, two full moons in one month. The media gave a full explanation. I realized the photograms I was making, of simple bowls of yogurt, looked like moons. They could be blue moons. Each image is a uniquely hand-toned.
Plant Life is a still-life documentation of my attempts at gardening. Some years ago, I began photographing my ongoing efforts to grow things. Having little horticultural ability, I primarily recorded my failures. During Covid, I read an article about generating scallions from cuttings. I returned to this series with a limited degree of success. I would be an urban farmer. My attention drifted. I needed to move my teaching online and the plants were neglected. Whether the plants thrive or not, the photographs survive and hold their own enigma.
The natural world is a starting point for constructions of the mind. -Joan Fitzsimmons
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Into What World? is a solo exhibition by Joan Fitzsimmons and a personal investigation into landscape as a place of dreams and imagination. It consists of selections from three of her photographic series called The Woods, Blue Moon, and Plant Life.
I have walked as long as I can remember. My Father would gather me, and my siblings, and we would walk for miles. We would walk to our grandparents' home. In summers, we walked here, in the Michigan woods, in search of evidence of past histories. When I walk, I dream. I don't start with that intent. I just want to move, but my mind moves with my body. It moves in time to places of memory and imagination.
My early landscape work began with a walk in the woods, a place for me, of both fear and fantasy. Some of the fantasy was Disneyesque, some took a dark turn. The Woods, my resulting series, was inspired by my experience of frequently being lost therein. It invited new formal challenges. In an attempt to create a sense of the dense environment, I broke from the traditional small photographic rectangle, choosing to respond to the vastness of the woods with the use of scale. Hand-made photograms speak to imagined creatures, The lines created by the spare branches resemble the flow of gesture drawings. Their intricate weaving constructs a tightly knit interior space.
Thoughts turned from the earth to the sky in the Blue Moon series. I never knew what a blue moon was. I loved the song. I knew the phrase, 鈥淥nce in a blue moon鈥�. A few years ago, a blue moon occurred, a fairly rare occurrence, two full moons in one month. The media gave a full explanation. I realized the photograms I was making, of simple bowls of yogurt, looked like moons. They could be blue moons. Each image is a uniquely hand-toned.
Plant Life is a still-life documentation of my attempts at gardening. Some years ago, I began photographing my ongoing efforts to grow things. Having little horticultural ability, I primarily recorded my failures. During Covid, I read an article about generating scallions from cuttings. I returned to this series with a limited degree of success. I would be an urban farmer. My attention drifted. I needed to move my teaching online and the plants were neglected. Whether the plants thrive or not, the photographs survive and hold their own enigma.
The natural world is a starting point for constructions of the mind. -Joan Fitzsimmons
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