LAND GRAB

New Exhibit at the Fetherston Gallery entitled Land/Structure/Impact. Below is a statement by one of the artists.

Heather Joy, 2009

I am constantly fascinated and frustrated with the impact humans have on the earth. I am drawn to trees in cages, litter in pristine landscapes, patterns of circles and squares carved into the terrain. I can't seem to photograph anything else; I can't seem to see anything else. I wonder if others marvel at the destruction and ultimate death we are inflicting.

My ongoing project uses aerial photography to expose human manipulation of the landscape. I have created two series so far for this project. The first series, part one, Tragic Beauty, was created in November 2004 after several commercial flights around the country. Each time I was glued to my window with my camera at my eye. It blew my mind when the pilot came on the intercom and said, “We are about to start the movie, so please close your window shade to reduce the glare on the TV monitors”. I refuse to close my window shade!
I refuse to close my eyes to the manipulated landscape below. My eyes are open to the fact that there is a road through that pristine mountain top. My eyes are open to the lake that has a perfectly flat side because of the dam at the end of it. My eyes are open to the patches of clear- cut throughout the forest below. I photographed that manipulated landscape, and I continued the manipulation by using oil paint to exaggerate the roads, the perfect circles, and the multiple squares.
I found these aerial patterns duplicated in other non-aerial photographs I had taken, and created my own manipulations on those photographs, and I felt powerful. I felt the way I imagine those who log our forests or build dams feel when they are controlling nature. The thing is, I use the electricity created by the dam, and the lumber from the forest, and I've driven many a mountain top road. So where does that leave me? It leaves me struggling-struggling with knowledge of the impact I also have on this earth.

Since part one I have shot hundreds more images and am now presenting the second series, part two, Ecotones. Ecotone (ecology + tension) is the name given to a transitional zone between two ecological communities, as between a forest and grassland or a river and its estuary. I see human-made ecotones throughout the landscape, where humans are attempting to control natural systems. Examples include the sharp boundary line between farmland and watershed, farmland and city, port and wetland among others. I further illustrate the sharp boundary lines in the images by adding sharp lines on the photographs which then extend on to the gallery walls. During this process, the lines end up crossing between images, further illustrating that we (humans, animals, nature) are all connected. For me, the manipulation of the gallery space is an attempt to deal with my own tensions about the continual human manipulation of natural ecosystems, events where we often forget we are all connected.