FAR FAR NEAR
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, January 14 2012
FAR FAR NEAR is a group exhibition featuring the work of Lauren Douglas, Billy Joe Miller, and Christopher West. The exhibition concept centers on memory, its dissolution and recollection, viewed through an autobiographical lens. Curator James Sterling Pitt initiated conversations with the three artists around such diverse images and events as a disintegrating beach house, a mother whale stranded in the Klamath River, and a World Series baseball game inturrupted by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The resulting mixed-media exhibition expands on such universal ideas as nostalgia, family ties, and attempts to fix a fleeting moment in time.
On a summer day during high school I was in the ocean with my father. I was wearing a star sapphire ring that was dear to me. When a set of waves came in I felt it slip off my finger. I went under water and tried in vain to find it in the sand. My father died a few years ago. The last time I saw him we took time to look in each others eyes. His eyes had changed. They reminded me of oceans and of the surface of the ring.
Opening reception featured musical sets by three Bay Area bands: Upside Drown, Fieldguide, and Danny Paul Grody.
Two photos of the ocean are found, reworked and represented. First with a light stain; the with chemical erosion.
