An abiding appreciation for our natural world and the role we play in it is the focus of my studio practice and work. Plant and animal specimens are feral plunder. I isolate them from their environs and reclaim them as still-life subjects. In this context, I have complete control over my subject and the power to build an environment of my choosing from an empty space. In exposing the small, quiet, and often overlooked, I examine the elegance of the commonplace, while indulging my interests in collecting the curious.
The graceful lines in architectural and mechanical drawings give me a map on which to begin. Though they serve as functional diagrams, I conceive them as timeless and imaginary spaces for my subject to inhabit. In working with the camera, and in some processes without, I create an alternative environment, through light and shadow, of captive souvenirs in a mystical and sometimes surprising context. The dramatic formality of line and light; the tension of shape and pattern; the graphic framework of black and white are my subjective tools for creative expression.
My work engages a variety of approaches to the photographic medium and I gravitate toward both historical and contemporary methods that involve the traditional darkroom, digital techniques, manual manipulation, and mark-making. The images, once printed, are reimagined through a mixed media process. Layers of wax, oil stick, pastel, transfer, and collage are employed as metaphors: symbols of the change and unpredictability that occurs as the natural world journeys through a continuous passage of seasons and time.
Thanks for engaging.
Carra Garza