Ken Smith Photo Journal

curved grass

This is a new image of old grass. I was wandering around with the camera, and came upon this unique sculptural form, from a survivor of last year’s grasses. I brought it home to work with. Nothing spectacular, shocking, colorful or earth shattering. But when I first saw the grass, and while working with it, I felt a building recognition, sense of belonging, kinship with the shape and what the grass represented.

image copyright © Ken Smith 2012 all rights reserved.

aspens and bloom

Spring aspens and blossoming. Spring fever.

woman with scarf

I do not often show my work with people, tho I have done alot of figurative work in the past. I am wishing to change that now, and work as much as possible with people during the coming year. Somehow, without slowing down on my other work, series, I will be looking for people to put in front of my camera. I need the variety, the change in subject, the collaboration. Since opening that horizon to myself, I am now flowing with ideas for new work with people.

This image was made some time ago…a quiet afternoon stroll along a winter lake. A lovely friend, a beautiful mood.

weeds at dusk

A strange thing about art. It can be raining and blowing a torrent outside like it is now, and one can go thru his past work and find an image. By looking at the image, I can remember the evening I approached this gaggle of sagebrush and weeds. I was not looking for anything special, but something was there in front of me, as tho it had urged me to look. The evening was silent, and I had come out there to be alone, but with nature. I looked thru the viewfinder to see this one beautiful desolate leafless branch like a black pen and ink among the autumn background. The evening light was inadequate for making pictures, but by bracing the camera just so, slowly making exposures with the lens aperture wide open, I thought at least one might fall in that nether time when there was no shake of hand or shutter.

Later, the image was beautiful, but it was too close to the time I shot it. I could not appreciate it, like looking at someone I was always close to. But now apart from it, as the the wind blows rain against the skylight, this serene image made on a windless, almost lightless evening, seems very special. That’s what it is about art. It removes you from your present, and represents a different time, a remembered place, a rarely felt feeling. Art is altered consciousness.

periphery 4 panel

This is one of the original assemblages of pressed flower on copper plate, beeswaxed, installed in a small panel. They remind me of specimen displays in a museum. But instead they are evidence of nature on a particular square piece of land. Proof of nature and my existence. I was amazed at the variety of flora in a relatively small space, and as the pressed flowers on sheets stacked higher, I knew I had missed many. Sometimes I would come to a spot, and collect a wildflower in my notebook I carried. And get set to move on. But then, I would see a different flower, or weed, or type of grass. It had a gesture, so I added it to my notebook. And then, another became interesting. Finally, the notebook would be full, from just a one 6 foot circle of ground. I know there are many I did not see, and am eager for spring to arrive again for another year.

periphery 2

In the Spring of 2011, I began collecting wildflowers, weeds, and grasses from my square property on which I live for a new series I had in mind, my ‘periphery series’.

The thought was to include the flora within the fenceline and invisible boundary lines of the property. An intimate collection that necessarily included me, and my relationship with all within the square. My association with the flora on the land that I am custodian of…identification, recognition, belonging.

The collecting and the subsequent series not only defined the flora within the boundary, but also sought to suggest the idea of boundary-less, for the flora escaped my fencelines and prospered onward into the neighbor’s property, oblivious to limits or mans’ records. The series reminded me that I too am boundaryless, and also, do not truly own the land, but am as transient and fragile as the smallest flower.

Keeping to the square format of the land, I pressed the flora, and then mounted them on squares of japanese paper on copper sheets that I distressed. I then beeswaxed over it all. I made an image of this assemblage, and then mounted the copper sheet inside an 8×8″ wood panel. The small panel is presented alongside the 20×20″ print framed 28×28″.

Nude with Vase

I was fortunate to work with my beautiful friend again, this time in color. An inspiring location, in luminous light.

Winter Aspens

Leaf and Rusted Iron

Brazil Flower 4