Vanessa Marsh

I’ve lived up and down the West Coast and am greatly influenced by the landscapes of the American West. Two years ago, my partner and I decided to make Oregon our home and I left the Bay Area after almost 20 years. Spending time in nature and paying attention to the seasons in Oregon is changing the way I make work and creating new pathways and ideas.

In my art practice, I create imaginary landscapes and atmospheres through a mixed media process based in photography. I work in various photographic processes to create the illusion of a layered and dimensional landscape using opaque stencils and cut paper to make multiple exposures on light sensitive paper. I have translated this process into different forms of photographic printmaking, from traditional black and white darkroom prints, to analog color printing, wet plate collodion, lumen and cyanotype. I get the most excited when learning and working towards a new way of making; teaching myself and researching how I might use my core materials with a new-to-me photographic process.

Made using the cyanotype process, this series is the first to be made in my Oregon studio. While aspects of the California Landscape remain, other elements are starting to take over, things like blackberry bushes, ferns and evergreen trees. The images depict the infrastructure and amusements of modern culture set against otherwise remote locations. The darkness of the sky and the prevalence of stars allude to ancient skies, before light pollution changed our everyday experience of the universe. The images act as a meditation on our connection to the story of humanity, as well as our place in the vast geologic history of the earth and the cosmos.

-Vanessa Marsh