It is a paradox of life that great deal of daily effort is spent preparing for things to come, planning and anticipating rather than experiencing. One can be caught between working toward a goal and appreciating what is at that moment. Balance is essential but hard to achieve. 

I have come to view a particular plant I was given many years ago as a good metaphor for this paradox.  The night blooming cereus is a rangy plant -not very beautiful as a whole. Most of the year it is a tangle of thick fleshy leaves and odd stems, but once a year it may set a few buds. Some years there are none and very rarely there are more than a half-dozen buds. They grow and swell over several weeks and then one night they bloom. The display is bizarre and fantastic, the scent is sweetly exotic and it is all over by morning. Cultivation, anticipation and fleeting climactic experience… 

Artistic creation is a means of capturing ephemeral experiences and making the impermanent tangible.  A photograph freezes a moment in time but photography is also a process that is not totally spontaneous. 

The photographs of the night blooming cereus in this exhibition combine extremely "hands-on" papermaking, historic alternative photographic process and new digital technologies. The black and white images are palladium prints, a non-silver photographic printing method that requires the negative to be the same size as the final print. The negatives were prepared digitally and printed on transparency film using an ink jet printer. The color photographs are archival ink jet prints.

All the work is printed on paper that I have made specifically for this project.

February 11 - March 5, 2010
Opening Reception - Thursday February 11, 2010 6 - 9 PM
Closing Reception - Friday March 5, 2010 6 - 9 PM