uneasyWONDER Exhibition: February 20-March 20, 2025 Roger Hall Gallery, Lane Community College, Eugene, OR
Snap, click…pretty as a picture.
Technicolor blue skies, sturdy stands of Ponderosa Pine, and the musical babbling of a glacier-fed creek suggest an idyllic and balanced existence. The Central Oregon town of Sisters has a front-row seat to all of that, plus several majestic peaks — Broken Top, Mt. Washington and the Three Sisters — making life there akin to living in a postcard. Or so it may seem.
When I arrived for a month-long residency last August at the Pine Meadow Ranch and Center for Art & Agriculture just outside of Sisters, I wasn’t greeted by the trope of a postcard-perfect Western landscape, but rather by acrid air and smoke-draped mountains — a study in desaturated hues and a reminder of the increasing impact of climate change on the land and us. In my work, evidence-based sustainable actions have been acknowledged by the inclusion of hand-cut and stenciled patterns of the Rocky Mountain Bee plant — a model of resilience and hope. I’ve also juxtaposed mirrored surfaces that encourage self-reflection and (re)location within the environmental contexts suggested.
Born and raised in working class New Jersey, I made the life-altering decision to exchange New York's concrete canyons and a career in textile design for the open skies and lush landscapes of Oregon's Willamette Valley. It’s here that I laid the foundation for my identity as an artist, art educator and writer, and discovered my enduring subject — the land. The American West is a place where collaborative spaces — agriculture, ranching, wildlife and recreation — coexist while vying for limited resources. Using the universal language of pattern, my decorative and repeated motifs reference the trope of wallpaper. Like wallpaper, landscape is often considered as merely a backdrop — often disregarded in favor of human activity that may impact its natural resources and non-human species.
By approaching the land, not simply as a geographical features, but as a living as well as metaphorical space, the work presented in uneasyWONDER considers how environmental factors resonate with broader cultural narratives, tensions and pluralities to create an inclusive story of place. The work invites viewers to reflect on the psychological interplay between the natural world and human identity, the power of environmental resilience and the importance of community in transforming the land and ourselves.
In tandem with the visually-driven work, my writing practice is represented by three blog posts produced while in residence at Pine Meadow, as well as the opening scene from my feature screenplay, Living In A Postcard, inspired by the land and people of Central Oregon.
I wish to acknowledge the Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts & Agriculture and the Roundhouse Foundation, Sisters, OR, for support of my 2024 residency and work. Thank you!
- Kathleen Caprario
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