Giving Form to Meditation
By Tom Wachunas
Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
– Hebrews 11:1 -
EXHIBITION: Thin Places, photographs by Michele Waalkes, at Market Street Art
Spot, 219 N. Market Street, Minerva, Ohio, THROUGH FEBRUARY 2. Viewing hours
are Thursday – Saturday, 1:00 – 6:00 and by appointment. www.marketstreetartspot.com
Michele Waalkes’ sense of place transcends
immediate sensory data. Which is to say that her photographs of “thin places”
are really more akin to ethereal zones. Herein the obvious visual evidence of
locations in Assisi, Italy, has been re-processed to suggest ghostly essences
or ephemeral presences, transferred to a variety of surfaces including wood,
canvas and reflective metal.
Certainly her method of overlapping
exposures of two scenes/locales may be simple enough. Yet from that simplicity
of approach, she has generated richly textured, lovely juxtapositions of
separate physical realities that seemingly merge to create a third,
metaphysical reality. The pictorial whole becomes greater than the sum of its
parts.
These harmonizings of man-made entities
(such as religious artifacts, churches or other classically-styled
architectural works) with natural landscape elements are on one level symbols
of a heightened sentience, or metaphorical meditations on the unity of things
cognitive and intuitive, corporeal and spiritual, secular and holy.
The
two pieces printed on metal in this collection – Salvation and Today and
Tomorrow – shimmer with an opalescence that brings an uncanny sensation of
movement to the imagery. And in that sense, all
of the images here, imbued with gentle, diffuse light, suggest a kind of animation
- a temporal shifting, not too unlike a cinematic
encounter of separate scenes simultaneously fading in and out of view. In
Waalkes’ elegant pictures, the scenes hover in a frozen moment of serene equilibrium.
In all, these are visual devotions and
meditations, seen through the lens of quiet awe and reverence.
Photo: Entrance,
digital photo on canvas, by Michele Waalkes
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