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Director's Choice: "Autumn Burn Scar #1"Director's Choice: "Autumn Burn Scar #1"DIRECTOR'S CHOICE
Autumn Burn Scar #1
Debra Achen


Media: Folded, Burned, and Stitched Archival Pigment Collage
Frame Size: 19” x 26”
Price: $1200

Artist Statement:
“Folding and Mending”
The hand-folded, burned, and stitched prints in my “Folding and Mending” series are a way of conveying “the world folding in on itself” from the impacts of climate change. We are so focused on our daily tasks and routines that we are neglecting the environment on which our very survival depends. We have created an imbalance in which our world is collapsing.

As record storms and wildfires wreak havoc on our forests and communities, our ecosystems are unraveling at an alarming rate. My hand-manipulated photographs allude to the results. Coastlines erode and submerge as sea levels rise. Trees and forests, stressed from years of drought, succumb to disease and fire. Golden hills crack and crumble. All at the hand of mankind.

While large, complex solutions are needed to fix the damage, there are small things each of us can do to help slow the erosion, clear the air, mend the cracks, and hold our planet together. The stitching in my images is a metaphor for the mending and rebuilding we must do to make our world whole again.

Nature is resilient and our impacts can be reversed. Do we have the resolve to make change happen? Some of the “Folding and Mending” pieces are more deconstructive in nature. Multiple prints are collaged in layers, torn and scorched on the edges. Bits and patches extend beyond the image border, some held in place by threads… as if we dangle at the precipice.



Artist Bio:
Fine Art Photographer Debra Achen developed a passion for art and connection to nature while growing up in western Pennsylvania. She studied a variety of studio arts including drawing, painting and printmaking in addition to training in traditional film and darkroom photography. She obtained a BA in Visual Arts from the University of California at San Diego and eventually moved to Monterey, where she finds inspiration for her nature-based work.

Achen’s photography has been featured in international juried exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Europe and is included in a number of private and corporate collections. Her ongoing project, “Folding and Mending,” was awarded the 2022 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 and many of the pieces have been exhibited and published in both print and online platforms.

Process:
The hand-folded, torn, burned, and stitched prints in my “Folding and Mending” series are a way of conveying “the world folding in on itself” from the impacts of climate change. Many of the pieces are collages with one image layered over another. After creating a prototype to guide the placement of the manipulations, the images are printed on sustainable archival fine art paper. The first step is tear away pieces of the top image to allow sections of the bottom image to show through. Then the prints are folded, often to follow lines in the photos. Next, the edges of the torn prints are scorched with a flame and the two prints are collaged together. Finally, holes are poked through the two layers so that the needle and thread can be pulled through for the stitching. The stitching is a metaphor for the repairing and rebuilding we must do to make our world whole again.
JUROR'S STATEMENT:
Maybe you’ve heard this story before, maybe not. I was in graduate school in 1993. I was taking a digital arts class or something of the sort and it involved the first Photoshop. There were no layers. And worse, there was no “undo” feature. No going back. Once you made a choice, well, you were stuck with it. I remember working on a file for 6 hours and then oops, a mistake, and no undo button. I thought about how the technology was going to change so much in the coming years…and I wasn’t going to roll with the changes. I was just going to concentrate on historical processes in grad school. I unfolded my wooden camera and got to work. And that’s what I’m still doing. Shooting a wooden field camera and Tri-x and making my own emulsion. So when the Photographer’s Eye Collective asked me to jury their (S)Light of Hand show, I thought, “Well, here are all the processes I love in one place.” And there are. Sublime platinum prints, deep blue cyanotypes, photogravures like graphite drawings, mordançage veils flowing, a rare bromoil, collaged and hand-stitched landscapes, unexpected lumens, impossible salt prints of birds and twigs and water, gold leaf and silver leaf backed vellum prints, artists books like you’ve never seen, a masochistic (and gorgeous) four-color gum bichromate print, and even collodion on a box camera. Really, this show is beyond my wildest imagination of what an historical process could be. The artists in (S)Light of hand pushed the boundaries of what an alternative process print could be. They weren’t satisfied to just scratch the surface; they experimented and then experimented some more and then realized that there was no point in putting a limit on what could be created or imagined and for that, I am thrilled.

Thank you to Donna Cosentino for inviting me to jury this year’s show and for reminding me what I love about photography and the hand-made print. It’s been an honor.

Ann Jastrab, June 2023



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