Blue Hour Catalog

CURATORIAL NOTE

Blue is bunting, indigo and quick. Blue is jay, its chatter like jazz. Blue is grosbeak is bluebird is blackbird turned sky. The Chisos mountains at dusk are blue. Blue is ghost-like. Twilight. Deep border blue. Once is the blue moon where panthers dance. Twice is the blue belly of lizards flashing. Blue waves are heat waves, dervishes in sand. Blue is the long song of storm clouds gathering with rain.

Terry Tempest Williams

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks

After the spectacle of the sunset and before the promises of sunrise, the world is gradually cloaked in shades of blue. Blue Hour. Neither night, nor day. Neither here, nor there.

Both.

And.

Here, you have entered a space between. Between your outside life and this temporary interior world. Between reality and representation. Between concept and craft. Between foreign and familiar. Between you and me.

This exhibition explores times of transition, liminal space, and metamorphosis. Change is one of the surest experiences of the human condition, and the hovering poetic moments both in and out of time,

this metaphorical blue hour, offers us a space to be fully present in the in-between.

Blue hour is a bit of a misnomer. Not usually a full hour, its length changes with the transitions of this pale blue dot from one point in space to another, from season to season. It’s difficult to pinpoint an exact moment blue hour begins or ends. It both fades and grows. Both gradual and fleeting. Belonging to both the day and the night, belonging to neither, a phenomenon in its own right. This exhibition leverages the static nature of visual artwork as a model for how we might become reflective, become more still, become more present in pivotal moments between two states.

Works from over 50 artists explore visions of the landscape at Blue Hour, the coming of age, the transitions of caring for aging family or

one’s aging self, of social and technological transitions, of refugees here and there, of spiritual transformations from life to death, to afterlife. Artists have rendered the feeling of calm of a blue horizon over the ocean, the feeling of satisfaction at the closing of day welllived, or that deeper shade of “feeling blue” —melancholy, mourning, and longing we might all have known at some time, or know more often than sometimes.

Perhaps “feeling blue” is like the tint of a distant horizon, of the mountains far off. The blue Rebecca Solnit describes as, “the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here… the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in…”

Blue is a color at the furthest reaches of the visible spectrum. A color that we can never inhabit. A color of light we have learned is not

healthy for us to inhabit. The blue of distance is an emblem of that which we cannot possess. Goethe in his 1810 Theory of Colors writes, “we love to contemplate blue…not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it.” Disquieting wanderlust can consume our present if we cannot befriend desire on its own terms. Maria Popva muses, “We seek to silence it either by grasping toward its object in hungry hope of consummation, or with the restless resistance of denial and suppression.” But what if? What if, as Rebecca Solnit so tenderly proposes, “[desire] could be cherished as a sensation on its own terms, since it is as inherent to the human condition as blue is to distance? …for something of this longing will, like the blue of distance, only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition and

arrival, just as the mountains cease to be blue when you arrive among them and the blue instead tints the next beyond.”

What if, like the poet Keats, we could find a “Negative Capability,” an agility to float in the unknown, undefined mystery of our blue hours and in them find beauty. Not by doing more or less, traveling further or deeper, but by staying right here. When you step out into darkness, at first you believe you cannot see. But the remarkable apparatus of the eye slowly adjusts until the deepest blacks become subtle shapes of indigo and navy and prussian and ultramarine blue and we can miraculously find our way in this shadowed world. If you haven’t stepped out into the darkness lately, try it sometime. If we stay right here, in the precipice of the present, we do in

fact possess this blue. Our eyes and hearts behold the expansive melancholy of time and space, of light and dark, of beauty in the faraway, of the peaceful falling dusk, and the hope of dawning resurrection.

My hope for you is that this gallery space, this collection of visual meditations, and these written thoughts may be a blue hour of sorts, that invite you into a moment of reflection, of stillness, of acceptance, and perhaps even love for the joys and griefs, and all the transitions and longings of exactly the place you are now.

Sarah Bernhardt

Brian Alexander

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Blue hour for me speaks to an experiential continuum that is our shared perception of being alive on Earth. The ebb and flow of something to nothing and back again on an array of time scales from seconds to seasons to millennia. In my own work, I offer the “crumbs” of experience, the otherwise overlooked or voiceless which I expand upon and push to the foreground for consideration. I feel much is lost or ignored in the gaps or “blue space” as it is perceived as nothing of value. Yet a cloudy night sky still has the stars above it. Everything is here all the time - it’s our awareness that shifts, creating contrasts in experience. I believe everything is born from the gaps. When we are presented with something we don’t recognize, for a split second our minds are out of a job. We can feel a spaciousness in ourselves, our greater intelligence comes forward and for just a moment we are grounded and arguably better because we are open to the unknown.

Union

Ascending Vector

Ascending Vector

Michele Borgarelli

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Photographer Michele Borgarelli has spent the last two years honing his ability to fix his photographs with the emotion of a given moment. Technology has both such power to distract us from the presence of the blue hour, but also an incredible capacity as a tool to focus our attention on it. This image, so effortlessly, renders not only the beautiful light and unique color of the Blue Hour, but also an emotional space that could both be the calm of closure or a beckoning of beginning. We could be coming or going, or just sitting still taking in this sight. An unassuming yet slightly odd intervention of a ladder affixed in this natural environment is the transition between in and out, between the constructed and the natural, between gravity and weightlessness. Are you ready to dip your toes?

Image opposite : The Ladder

Charles Bosco

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Rather than directly depicting images of landscape, my work looks at the tools that are used to describe and define land, either for purposes of documentation and preservation, or to substantiate right of use. Tools like mapping, film stills, mythic symbols of early American landscapes, or legal language are combined and overlaid with my own invented landscapes. This work specifically explores text and language as a way to describe the landscape. Thread simultaneously damages and repairs the surface, allowing for original meaning to be subverted and new narratives to emerge. Image opposite : It Seeps

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Design and vibrant colors dominate the perception of the twilight hour. The endless change of blue shadows requires experimentation, and variation both in content and technique. Many moods are created by the relationship between glowing light and dark patterns of people coming and going in their subtle checkerboard space of life.

Image opposite : Twilight Zone

Marilynne Bradley

Madeline Brenner

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Madeline Brenner uses the alternative photographic process known as cyanotype with salt crystallization. What was once an experiment to control a fluid process, to contain the water and chemical reaction, quickly revealed itself as a lesson in letting go and trusting the process. The fluidity of water has consistently been an inspiration that continues to be explored in her work. As an art therapist, Madeline uses this creative technique as a meditation and intrinsic centering practice as well.

Image opposite : Luminance in Waces and Beyond the Boundary

Sally Brogden

ARTIST STATEMENT:

These ambiguous playful forms can be as straightforward or philosophical as the viewer pleases. The mirrored shape has one clear and consistent moment of transition, of change from one side to the other, from one color to the next. Many of the contemplations on the Blue Hour in this exhibition respond to a length of time or period of transition, rather than a sharp shift. These objects tap into the mysterious and unknown and pull us into their formal binaries and curious relationships. Images opposite and on following page : Untitled

Katie Calfee

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Historically, the “Dog Days of Summer’’ refer to the time of the year when the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, rises in tandem with the Sun. The Greeks and Romans associated this phenomenon with catastrophe and disaster; Dog Days II converts this theme of fear into courage and opportunity.

Between July 3rd and August 11th, 2022, a daily ritual of creating at least one photogram was explored. With the Sun at its apex, its radiant energy transformed treated cotton into cyanotype prints of Prussian blue. Cicadas flanked by nymph shells echo themes of growth while white shadows of plants shimmer in a mirage of playful compositions. This starburst quilt of “dye-amonds” conserves the heat of summer in a story of shared experiences that are as warm as the blanket itself.

Image opposite : Dog Days II

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Trevor Campbell is interested in exploring themes of the wild and addressing climate issues by shedding light on them, as well as sharing his respect for the Earth. In an attempt to reduce waste, my process has transitioned to using ethically harvested natural materials. The act of processing and using cattail paper is a shift to being more environmentally conscious and reflecting on the process as well as addressing certain environmental issues. Image opposite : Process as Subject

Trevor Campbell

Youyun Chung

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I love to be in the woods in transitional moments from day to night. That time passes swiftly but I can feel the unique shades of blue and scent in the air from this special moment.

Image opposite : Blue Forest

Bettina Cousineau

ARTIST STATEMENT:

In the waxing and waning hours where the edges between objects dissolve, we have an opportunity to see more clearly: our understanding of the object lives simultaneously in reality, memory, and imagination. We superimpose all of our experiences of that object onto this instance – not using our eyes to see the actual form of the object but instead relying on our somatic experience of it. The objects I draw are in this moment. The edges are unclear and mutable. Lines go off in all directions, and the border between object and experience is unclear. It is intentionally a place of creation and destruction. I often wonder: is what I am drawing forming or dissolving?

Image opposite : In the Bois

Jessica Curning-Kuenzi

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I have been photographing nature in the midwest for the last 25 years. I spend as much time as possible exploring the trails, waterways and natural areas to create images that exemplify a sense of peace and tranquility, awe, and hope for the preservation of these places. I sometimes spend hours in the same spot anticipating the perfect light. I love the blue hour for its wide range of colors blending together in the delicate layers of the sky. Image opposite : Mississippi River Blue Hour

John DenHouter

ARTIST STATEMENT:

These images represent an ongoing series of works addressing the physical and emotional challenges that my family has dealt with through the aging process. Dilapidated and obsolete athletic equipment stand in for specific people that find themselves in unexpected contests with unforeseen endings.

CURATORIAL NOTE:

A quiet reflectiveness and the tenderness of companionship combined with beautifully saturated hues and softly rendered surroundings imbue these aging objects with grief, but also a compelling sense of compassion and care as they transition into a final blue hour.

Opposite : Broken Dream and Night Watch

Image opposite : Quarantine

own way, based on their own personal 38

signposts, encourage the viewer to navigate

Image opposite : Quarantine

own way, based on their own personal experience.

created in the work are not explicit, I

is organized into mystical and mysterious

landscape in which I live. This imagery,

upon my interest in decaying architecture,

This work incorporates layers of textural

signposts, encourage the viewer to navigate the implied narratives in their

created in the work are not explicit, I incorporate symbols that, like

is organized into mystical and mysterious landscapes. While the stories

landscape in which I live. This imagery, rich in personally derived symbolism,

upon my interest in decaying architecture, nature, and the Mid-Western

This work incorporates layers of textural and organic imagery that draws

Matthew Derezinski

Mark Dierker

ARTIST STATEMENT:

As many nights a year as the weather will allow, I spend my time driving around looking for scenes to shoot in the dark. The dark holds secrets many people never have a chance to see, from storms to stars and sometimes just the dying or birth of the light. This image captures Beaver Blood Moon Eclipse over the Mississippi River in East Dubuque, IL.

Image opposite : Moon River

Lauren Douglas

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Lauren Douglas’ mixed media collages often incorporate antique photographs, hues of blue, text, and images of the moon. While Douglas is compelled by the passage of time, the text in this piece “She is still here” is a poignant counterpoint to the constant unstoppable march of passing days. The hand painted ombre frame around this portrait recalls the falling darkness of blue hour, yet the firm, enduring “She is still here” holds fast even as day transitions to night and night to day again. We can perhaps resonate with the dissonance one might feel when times moves on, and we have not. The elongated dress surpasses the boundaries of the small portrait and continues on even past the painted frame like the continuation of a person’s line into generations to come.

Image opposite : She is Still Here

Andrea Ernest-Sheehan

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Egg tempera paintings retain a ghost of all previous layers. Even after dozens of new layers, vestiges of good, bad, and downright ugly marks remain and must be reckoned with. It’s life! I believe in working from life and this piece is a significant departure as it’s based on snapshots taken and sent to a friend who died. This image only employs blue and black pigments, yet the idea of ‘blue’, for me, is more than a quality of light or time of day. It’s a time of life. It’s loss. It’s isolation. There is beauty, but squinting is required.

Image opposite : Grimes Cove Farm Meadow

Robert Eustace

ARTIST STATEMENT:

From a suite of 4 pieces FINDING SANCTUARY , these forest environments invite one to step inside their excavations of discovery. My work speaks of that rare fleeting twilight (or predawn) moment when the loud excess of the day begins to merge (or reemerge) into or from the harmonious stillness of shadows. Long has my body of work been focused on nature and faith: From childhood playtime in the park system wilderness in upper Manhattan... ‘the Tree of Life’ motif... traversing “the path less path” (Krishnamurti)... the idea of ‘radiance zones’ - small hidden pockets of safe haven and refuge... the trad Celtic idea of ‘thin places’ - a physical location where the separation of the divine and earth is ‘thin’ = ‘the edge’ = a holy place.

Image opposite : Finding Sanctuary no. 1 and Finding Sanctuary no. 2

ARTIST STATEMENT:

This encaustic collage painting is from my Homegrown series, which began with the first hints of Spring as a celebration of rebirth & renewal. Seeds of hope have emerged from two years of being mostly homebound due to the pandemic. Here I am exploring themes of the past through old text and photographic images overlaid with pops of bold color and shape that speaks to growth and fresh starts as we enter a phase of new normal.

Tracy Finn

Image opposite : Blue Dawn

Gigi Florek

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Blue Forms is a series of modular molds, slip cast, and soda fired. The mold itself consists of 50 independent parts that can be arranged in any orientation. The parts can morph into anything the creator desires. They are puzzle pieces fit for any outcome. It reminds me of how our experiences shape our persona. We may have similar backgrounds, but we all turn out different, special. The molds also have the unique ability of allowing any side to be cast. Thus, the curvature of the forms mimics each other. Although we each have different experiences, that’s how we connect to one another.

Image opposite : Blue Form 1 - 8

Blue Form 1, Blue Form 2 and Blue Form 3

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Trees morph season to season: fading at dusk then reborn at sunrise. People age, some wiser, some continuously sliding. Since I work instinctively from nature, I gravitate towards the way the natural world ebbs and flows from daylight to evening, some moments shining with color, others declining into subdued vibrance with the natural course of passing time.

Image opposite : Ozark at Dusk

Gloria Gale

Suzanne Glémot

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I’m from a small coastal village situated on the northern shores of Brittany, in France. Images of the sea are frequently present in my mind as I produce work through a variety of time-intensive practices — typically bookbinding, natural dyeing, and artist bookwork. Rendered in natural indigo, “RamèneMoi” is a meditation on the color blue as a substitute for the ebbing tides of the coastline I hold dear, an attempt to capture a fascination with both a color and a place.

Image opposite : Ramène-Moi (Bring Me Back)

Philip Harper

ARTIST STATEMENT:

This print is inspired by the Biblical story of Jacob, who cheats his brother of his inheritance and flees. The start and end of his time away from home is marked by mysterious experiences both of which occur at ‘the Blue Hour’.

At the end of his journey and just before his reconciliation with his brother, Jacob wrestles a mysterious stranger, often proposed to be God himself, from dusk until daybreak. For Jacob, the liminal time of ‘the Blue Hour’ is a transformational metamorphosis as he also wrestles with himself and his actions of betrayal.

Image opposite : The Wrestlers

Emma High

ARTIST STATEMENT:

This work explores the relationship of my physical body immersed in an unfamiliar environment. It was created in response to living in Bratislava for the first time knowing neither the language nor geography. Physical movement and film were my way of connecting the dots of my experience and pushing the limits of my own discomfort while adjusting. Setting a task untethered to an end goal was used to emphasize the compounded ambiguities that come with living in a new culture and place. As I struggled to move up the stairway, tied to self-obstruction, I explored emotions of discomfort, anticipation, excitement, and fear - all sensations universally felt within an unknown or liminal experience. Over the course of time in this piece, the viewer can be moved beyond their own associations or ideas of the subject, and transported into a meditative experience as they watch.

Linda Jurkiewicz

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Over the course of 4 months, I painted and printed “blue” words and sewed blue fabric. What started out as a very personal journey, reliving my life in regards to its sadness, began to turn into a more complex expedition. I began to think of my brothers and sisters and the stories I know of their struggles. Then I thought of my mother and her own fight with depression. And then I thought of my friends who have had lives that presented difficult moments and resulting sadness. My quilt process had helped me make a journey that took me from my own pain to a realization that we all live with sadness at one time or another in our life. Not one of us is exempt from this most basic human emotion. I see that I am not alone in this story. Life is easier to bear, not alone.

52 Years of the Blues

Tom Koken

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Blue is such a charged word for me. I don’t think of it too much as an adjective. It feels like more of a noun. A thing. A place. A feeling. In my artwork, it’s often a default mode. I start or end up there. It’s a certain kind of blue. It’s the blue of the day’s passage into night. And also of the whole night itself. The kind that hovers always around — whether seen or imagined. It’s the color of dreams; where we go during this time of the night that seems black, but is really a very, very dark blue. I’m also accepting of its associations with sadness, melancholia, and mourning, yet blue is the most popular color in the world. The color of one of my very favorite albums — Joni Mitchell’s Blue .

Image opposite : And 11

Fergus

Jesper Donal

Kristi Kuder

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Here, in Minnesota, few things are more prominent than the expansiveness of sky and water and are manifested by a broad spectrum of blues. I consider blue to be analogous to distance and the unknown in which ambiguity often resides. Observing my rural surroundings has influenced how I perceive ambiguity. The elements within nature cause me to question points of liminality. Where does sky become earth when concealed by rain, snow, or fog? When does a fallen leaf become soil, or a caterpillar become a butterfly? At what p oint does an abandoned farmstead become nature’s ward? My photographs represent an exercise in seeing, honing perception of the ephemeral life of natural elements that are in a constant state of transformation. They also exist as a record of an intimate and sustained exchange between me and my surroundings, centered on forming a deeper relationship to place.

Image opposite : Belt of Venus

Blue on Blue

Waterscape III

Jordan Lienhoop

ARTIST STATEMENT:

There are 15 months between my sister and me. Growing up, my mom dressed us in matching clothes like the blue dresses in these photos, and people often mistook us for twins. Though we shared countless external experiences, as adults we realized we often had different internal interpretations of our childhood memories. These pieces are part of the process of continuing to contemplate the space between our exterior and interior realities, and the ongoing shifts in our memories as we continue to reflect on them together.

Opposite images : Blue Girls (#2) and Blue Girls (#3)

Craig Lloyd

ARTIST STATEMENT:

There seems to be a basic human need to experience vast space and natural phenomena. We pause to take it in as the moment strikes us. Light, color, atmosphere and the seasons are all part of what has stopped me at these places. But open space is also a commodity.

The image here is a view after an evening storm, of a parcel of hillside, a small ecosystem that survives in a densely developed older urban neighborhood.

CURATORIAL NOTE:

Lloyd uses an aesthetic approach to painting landscapes rooted in 19th century traditions which were steeped in idealism, romanticism, and

colonialism. Yet here he undermines those ideals of naturalism and wildness, rendering a reality that is only a small last vestige of a once expansive land, amidst human development and expansion.

Image : Jungle

Mia Loia

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The year I left art school, I lived and kept a studio in the unheated attic of an early 1930’s home, on Dixon St, in Newport, RI. I spent many days and nights of that very cold year on long walks around Aquidneck Island, simultaneously grateful for the beauty that surrounded my life there and frustrated at the lack of direction graduation had left me with. In between freelance design work and bartending gigs, I tried to paint anything that shimmered at me in the language of hope, often abandoning work half way through, losing the sparkle that drove me to the subject.

The house I shared with 4 other former classmates sat near the end of a street that sloped toward the bay a few blocks west. Most days, I would

end my walks headed purposefully in that direction, in order to catch the end of the sunset. Using up all the sunlight to extend my strolls, my favorite time of day was when the pinks, oranges, and yellows have all but disappeared, leaving the slightest hint of green to grace where the sky meets the land.

This painting is a homage to that time in my life, to a twenty-two year-old’s search for meaning, and a reminder that sometimes fulfillment lies within gratitude for the simple beauty of any present moment.

Image : Post Grad

Justin M Millar

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Kent and Convoy was taken at blue hour on the first night that the “Freedom Convoy 2022” arrived in Ottawa, Ontario. A view of Kent St from above, these vehicles occupied the street for the following 3 weeks creating an almost unlivable environment which left Ottawa residents feeling trapped by this occupation. Although at first glance the image holds an aesthetic stillness, many are reminded of the truck horns at all hours, exhaust fumes, harassment towards people wearing masks, fireworks in the streets, businesses closed, hate crimes against the 2SLGBTQ+ community, and many more. The cross section of two streets in the composition suggests a polarizing divide amongst Canadian citizens.

Image opposite : Kent & Convoy

Lori Marble

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The year before the pandemic I underwent surgery to implant a deep brain stimulator (DBS) to treat hemi-dystonia on my left side. The main “ask” of the surgeon was ‘don’t get sick’. So, for the next month, predominantly right handed, I stayed from daylight to dark in my studio, teaching myself to paint using my left hand, testing and stretching the limits of how this device impacts my work. In short order, the pandemic slid in and once again I found myself spending a great deal of time in my studio, in front of the large windows overlooking my raised flower beds, watching the light shift from golden to the blue hour. I still paint left-handed and much of my inspiration comes from the changing light outside my window.

Image opposite : Twilight Garden

Jeanne Marklin

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Winter brings a blue light to dusk in New England. The trees in my yard have become strong sentinels, making me feel safe. In turn, I care for the trees to keep them healthy for the next generation.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Image : The World Turned Upside Down

Brian Mitchell

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Often we want to change ourselves - search for a job, move past a trauma, forgive someone that has hurt us - but find ourselves trapped motionless by our fears, worries or anger. You are invited to write down the things that are holding them back from taking the first step toward change and to place it in the purse. This figure - a literal cage made from chains - will hold those thoughts for you so that you can begin your metamorphosis. At the end of the exhibit, the papers will be collected and burned.

Image opposite : Open the Cage

Sara Nordling

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The Space Between was created when I was contemplating that most of life is actually lived between major events. We can spend our time looking for the next big happening, or we can live our lives in the spaces between those events. That time often looks amorphous and fuzzy, yet it can be a time of beauty and growth. To capture that into a weaving, I wanted the spaces between the major color changes to be just as important as the colored areas. The work has a dimensional look, even though the surface is flat and can help us appreciate the dynamic dimensionality of our everyday present.

Image opposite : The Space Between

Mark Pack

ARTIST STATEMENT:

In my paintings and sculptures, I am exploring the process of brushing, pouring, and layering paint – sometimes hundreds of layers thick, then going into these layers and cutting and reshaping the work, watching it evolve. “Growing” is the word that best describes my primary concern while painting. Growth happens in all living things and much of my work is in a state of perpetual growth. This growth may be interrupted at a certain point when I find a certain aspect that I want to venerate and display. Sometimes this is a temporary pause, as the piece may undergo additional evolution if it returns to my studio.

Image opposite : Infinity

Magda Parasidis

ARTIST STATEMENT:

In the conceptual project, Ghosts in Sunlight, I investigate the intersection of economic and social justice through the feminist perspective. My work is concerned with how the aesthetics of place contain both systemic exclusionary practices and opportunities for imagining practices of living otherwise. The series of text photos reimagine the public housing I have known as home, as a space of poetic revelation. Photographed entirely after nightfall and illuminated only by the lights of the buildings themselves, the work is an inquiry into absence and presence. How does a community that sees home surrounded by the carceral aesthetics of containment and surveillance, also create underground networks of mutuality and autonomy?

Black, white and blue, the meditative, liminal space of the work, and the handwritten “tags” of a dissenting self, invite us to contemplate our emotional responses to race, class and difference, in the service of a renewed critical consciousness.

Image : Resist

Keith Pitts

ARTIST STATEMENT:

These works consist of blue powder pigment trapped beneath plexiglass. They are paintings that are in a continual state of becoming, never identical from display location to display location. As the paintings are transported from studio to venue and back, the powder pigment slowly works its way around the white ground surrounding the captured pigment. Each painting is constantly becoming, remaking itself over the duration of its lifetime. The moments of rest when the paintings are not in transition from one space to another are liminal moments in its duration. Each space the work is viewed in is a unique temporal moment. Subsequent times viewings occur finds that the pigment has shift ed allowing the paintings to become new. When one of these paintings is invited to a venue, a new painting is created allowing the process of becoming to begin again.

Blue Diamond

Blue Dot

Bill Russell

ARTIST STATEMENT:

As a conceptual fiber artist on the autism spectrum, I make art as a means to understand human behavior and explore questions about identity, family, and society. Noticing the nuances of change is an underlying theme of my recent meditations. I celebrate these subtle transformations through this reflection on “the blue hour.” This work investigates our constant state of metamorphosis with the environment and the shifting boundaries between land, water, and human intervention. The digital images depict the Alton Slough, a major bird migration flyway, and the Granite City Foundry, where

steel is created from the conversion of rock to liquid. The blue collar garments examine how we commemorate the milestones of life through dress and ritual. Retirement is the transition from work to rest and the tradition of the family photo marks transformation shared across generations.

Image : Blue Hour Diptych

Jeff Schofield

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I installed these ice letters on frozen Saginaw Bay and Houghton Lake, in Michigan. How soon will glaciers and icebergs disappear entirely, or lakes and bays stop freezing over in winter? Our era marks a global transition to a warmer, wetter planet. We live in a liminal space where the climate metamorphosis keeps accelerating with time. These artworks probe the intersections between sculpture, architecture, installation and land art to comment on humanity’s complicated relationship with nature.

Image opposite : Iceberg

Gayathri Seetharaman

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Growing up in India, I draw inspiration from the lively sights, sounds, and traditions of folk-arts. My self-taught artistic expressions in photography stem from my travels, exploring and understanding the similarities between different art-forms from around the world. This image explores the time between seasons and the space between wild and inhabited. Image opposite : Down the River

Heather Sparkman

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Inspired by the November sunsets, these works employ muted colors backed by the remembrance of summer sunsets in brighter tones. November often features a transition of color in the evening skies as the light filters through the fall and winter skies.

Opposite images : November Blue I and November Blue II

Barb Stahl

ARTIST STATEMENT:

There is something so magical about the rising of the sun. When light emerges from the horizon and the deep blues and violets start to dissipate into space. The time when it is neither day nor night. This time holds the infinite hope of outcomes for the new day dawning. The moment when all things are possible.

Image opposite : Sunrise From the Road

Richard P Stevens

ARTIST STATEMENT:

This image is from the After Hours series, featuring people and places photographed with a cell phone as I am out and about in the early evening hours.

CURATORIAL NOTE:

This photograph, permeated with that ever present blue light of screens, washes over a lonely, empty bar in the foreground of the composition, strongly contrasted by a warm glow haloing a group of people engaged in conversation near the background. Stevens’ snapshot reflects on the insidious shift from blue hour being an ephemeral natural phenomenon to a pervasive technological constancy.

Image opposite : Blue Reflections

Benita VanWinkle

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I walk during the magic hour while the fog silently makes an ascent over the field. The birds cock their heads in the mist, listening for the insect chirps as I amble by. Reaching the pond, I squat down, scanning the surface for the gift of tiny ringlets to photograph in the indigo expanse across the surface. A golden leaf falls just in front of my feet. I know this day has begun well. Image opposite : Indigo and Gold

Ed Whitmore

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I work with metal effect paints (iron, copper, bronze) which change color as they oxidize, creating evocative patina in subtle shades of brown, green and blue. The accumulation of paint evokes the passage of time and suggests loss and decay. In folklore, the bewitching hour is a time of night between midnight and 4 am that is associated with supernatural events, whereby witches, demons, and ghosts are thought to be at their most powerful. My painting IN THE BEWITCHING HOUR has been executed on a vintage letterpress tray and is reminiscent of a midnight stroll through a cemetery during a full moon. Neither night nor day. Simultaneously eerie yet lovely.

Image opposite : In the Bewitching Hour

Rachel York

ARTIST STATEMENT:

This piece was made while contemplating the paradoxical nature of longing for that which is not reachable: the view from the ground of the heavens, the light setting in the fields, spaces that you long to draw closer to but can never grasp except from a distance.

Image opposite : From Dust

Ariel Zhang

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Blue is a distant color representing infinity and possibilities. This painting includes loaded areas of corners and transitions from one space to another. The space disintegrates and rebuilds itself at the same time. The space has a hidden gravity, hidden connections in the in-between space, depicting the moment of the ephemeral, and of silence that has been extended and thickened.

Image opposite : The Visibility of the Invisible

Alexander, Brian

Ascending Vector : NFS | 2021 | 1:37 | Video

Union : NFS | 2022 | 2:08 | Video

Website : BrianAlexanderStudio.com | Instagram @TraceBloomAudio

Borgarelli, Michele

The Ladder : $200 | 2022 | 19 x 25 x 2 inches | Photography

Website : www.flickr.com/photos/MBorgare

Bosco, Charles

It Seeps : $500 | 2022 | 12 x 12 inches | Thread and ink on found paper

Website : CharlieBosco.com | Instagram @CharlBosco

Bradley, Marilynne

Twilight Zone : $2,200 | 2020 | 15 x 22 inches | Watercolor

Website : MarilynneBradley.com | Facebok @Marilynne.Bradley

Brenner, Madeline

Beyond the Boundary : $60 | 2022 | 7.75 x 7.25 inches | Cyanotype and salt

Luminance in Waces : $125 | 2020 | 16 x 11.5 inches | Cyanotype and cotton

Instagram @MadelineAubree

Brogden, Sally

Untitled : $900 | 2022 | 19 x 4 x 4 inches | Porcelain

Calfee, Katie

Dog Days II : $3,200 | 2022 | 70 x 60 inches | Cyanotype, cotton, fabric

Website : KatieCalfee.com | Instagram @CloaknDragher

Campbell, Trevor

Process as Subject : $100 | 2022 | 10 x 8 inches | Linocut print on handmade cattail paper

Website : TrevorCampbellArt.com | Instagram @Trevor.Campbell_Art

Chung, Youyun

Blue Forest : $2,000 | 2022 | 12 x 18.5 inches | Oil on canvas

Website : www.YouyunChung.com

Cousineau, Bettina

In the Bois : NFS | 2022 | 28 x 28 inches | Mixed media drawing on paper

Website : BdCousineau.com

Curning-Kuenzi, Jessica

Mississippi River Blue Hour : $400 | 2022 | 20 x 30 inches | Photograph printed on aluminum

Website : www.CurningPhoto.com | Instagram @Curning_Nature_Photography

DenHouter, John

Broken Dream : $500 | 2020 | 50 x 36 x 1 inches | Oil on canvas

Night Watch : $500 | 2022 | 50 x 40 x 2 inches | Oil on canvas

Derezinski, Matthew

Quarantine : $700 | 2021 | 9 x 19 inches | Digital

Website : MDerezinski.wordpress.com

Dierker, Mark

Moon River : $350 | 2022 | 18 x 24 inches | Digital c-print

Website : www.BearDancerStudios.com | Instagram @BearDancerStudios

Douglas, Lauren

She is Still Here : $200 | 2021 | 14 x 11 inches | Mixed media collage

Instagram @LaurenDouglas_Artist

Ernest-Sheehan, Andrea

Grimes Cove Farm Meadow : $1,000 | 2022 | 4 x 4 inches | Egg tempera

Eustace, Robert

Finding Sanctuary no. 1 : $3,295 | 2022 | 12.5 x 9.5 inches | Gradually transformed original drawing Finding Sanctuary no. 2 : $3,295 | 2022 | 12.5 x 9.5 inches | Gradually transformed original drawing

Website : www.behance.net/RobertEustace | Instagram @Robert.Eustace

Finn, Tracy

Blue Dawn : $500 | 2022 | 10 x 10 inches | Encaustic and paper on wood panel

Website : TracyFinnStudio.com | Instagram @TracyFinnStudio

Florek, Gigi

Blue Form 5 : $40 | 2022 | 4 x 4 x 1 inches | Porcelain, glaze

Blue Form 6 : $40 | 2022 | 3.5 x 3.5 x 1 inches | Porcelain, glaze

Blue Form 7 : NFS | 2022 | 3.5 x 3.5 x 1.5 inches | Porcelain, glaze

Blue Form 8 : NFS | 2022 | 3.5 x 3 x 1.5 inches | Porcelain, glaze

Website : GigiFlorek.wixsite.com/artist

Gale, Gloria

Ozark at Dusk : $450 | 2016 | 12 x 16 inches | Acrylic

Website : www.GloriaGaleArtist.com | Instagram @GloriaGaleArtist

Glémot, Suzanne

Ramène-Moi (Bring Me Back) : NFS | 2019 | 3.75 x 2.5 x 1.5 inches

Natural Indigo Dip-Dye Progression on Paper; Wooden Boards

Website : www.SuzanneGlemot.com/en/books-prints

Harper, Philip

The Wrestlers : $30 | 2022 | 7 x 5 inches | Linocut print

Instagram @P.HarperPrintMaker

High, Emma

Ritual : NFS | 2010 | 8:48 | Video

Website : EmmaHigh.com

Jurkiewicz, Linda

52 Years of the Blues : $800 | 2012 | 32 x 79 inches | Fiber, digital printing, stenciled, machine quilted

Website : Lizzer58.wixsite.com/LindaJurkiewicz | Instagram @LindaJurkiewicz

Koken, Tom

And 11 : $1,200 | 2018 | 20 x 16 inches | Pigment, oil on canvas paper

And 71 : $1,200 | 2019 | 18 x 24 inches | Pigment, oil on canvas paper

And 77 : $1,200 | 2019 | 18 x 24 inches | Pigment, oil on canvas paper

Masel+Myles : $600 | 2022 | 12 x 18 inches | Oil on canvas paper

Donal : $300 | 2022 | 12 x 9 inches | Oil on canvas paper

Fergus : $300 | 2022 | 12 x 9 inches | Oil on canvas paper

Jesper : $300 | 2022 | 12 x 9 inches | Oil on canvas paper

Website : www.TomKoken.com | Instagram @TomKokenArt

Kuder, Kristi

Belt of Venus : $175 | 2021 | 11 x 14 inches | Photograph

Blue on Blue : $175 | 2022 | 14 x 11 inches | Photograph tinted

Waterscape III : $175 | 2022 | 11 x 14 inches | Photograph

Website : KsKuder.com

Lienhoop, Jordan

Blue Girls (#2) : NFS | 2022 | 8 x 10 inches | Woven cut paper

Blue Girls (#3) : NFS | 2022 | 11 x 14 inches | Cut paper

Website : www.JordanLienhoop.com | Instagram @JordanLienHoop

Lloyd, Craig

Jungle : $2,400 | 2018 | 24 x 33 inches | Oil on canvas

Website : CLloydFineArt.com

Loia, Mia

Post Grad : $2,400 | 2016 | 26 x 12 inches | Oil on wood panel

Website : MiaLoia.com | Instagram @MiaLoia

Marble, Lori

Twilight Garden : $750 | 2022 | 24 x 18 inches | Mixed media on paper

Website : www.LoriMarble.com | Instagram @LoriMarble

Marklin, Jeanne

The World Turned Upside Down : $1,700 | 2017 | 50 x 32 inches | Fiber

Website : www.JeanneMarklin.com | Facebook @JeanneMarklinArt

Millar, Justin M

Kent & Convoy : $2,000 | 2022 | 37 x 21 inches | Photography

Website : www.JustinmMillar.com | Instagram @JustinmMillar

Mitchell, Brian

Open the Cage : $2,000 | 2022 | 37 x 14 x 14 inches | Metal, paint, purse

Instagram @SteelCraftStudio

Nordling, Sara

The Space Between : $2,800 | 2022 | 33 x 63 inches | Dyed and woven cotton yarn

Website : www.SaraNordling.com

Pack, Mark

Infinity : $1,525 | 2019 | 27 x 26 inches | Acrylic and mixed media on wood

Website : Foundwork.art/artists/MarkPack | Instagram @PaintingSpecimen092901

Parasidis, Magda

Resist : $900 | 2019 | 24 x 16 inches | C-print, ink marker, acrylic Instagram @MagdaParasidis

Pitts, Keith

Blue Diamond : NFS | 2021 | 10 x 10 inches | Dry pigment, gesso, and graphite on chipboard

Blue Dot : NFS | 2021 | 24 x 24 inches | Dry pigment, acrylic, plexiglass on hardboard

Website : KeithPittsArt.com | Instagram @eewhiteart42

Russell, Bill

Blue Hour Diptych : $2,000 | 2022 | 92 x 60 x 14 inches | Pigment ink prints, ink, driftwood, upcycled shirts

Website : www.DrBillRussell.com | Instagram @DrBillRussell

Schofield, Jeff

Iceberg : NFS | 2022 | 10 x 50 x 3 inches | Ice

Website : www.JeffSchofield.net

Seetharaman, Gayathri

Down the River : $285 | 2020 | 11 x 14 inches | Photograph

Website : www.ArtByGayathriSeetharaman | Instagram @Art_By_G3

Sparkman, Heather

November Blue I : $150 | 2022 | 5 x 3 inches | Acrylic paint

November Blue II : $150 | 2022 | 5 x 3 inches | Acrylic paint on canvas

Website : www.HeatherSparkman.com | Instagram @HeatherSparkmanArt

Stahl, Barb

Sunrise From the Road : $1,800 | 2017 | 22 x 35 inches | Oil and wax on panel

Website : BarbaraStahl.com

Stevens, Richard P

Blue Reflections : $350 | 2022 | 20 x 18 inches | Digital photograph

Website : www.RichardpStevensArt.com

VanWinkle, Benita

Indigo and Gold : $200 | 2022 | 16 x 12 inches | Photography

Website : www.BusybStudio.com

Whitmore, Ed

In the Bewitching Hour : $1,500 | 2018 | 17 x 34 inches | Metal effects paint on vintage letterpress tray

Website : www.EdWhitmore.com

York, Rachel

From Dust : $1500 | 2022 | 28 x 22 inches | Oil on canvas

Website : www.RYork.Art | Instagram @RYork.Art

Zhang, Ariel

The Visibility of the Invisible : NFS | 2021 | 40 x 30 inches | Oil on canvas

Website : ArielZhang.Art | Instagram @ArielDuo

Bernhardt, Sarah : CURATOR

Website : www.SrBernhardt.Art | Instagram @SrBernhardt

Parviz, April : C atalog Layout Designer

Website : www.AprilParviz.ART | Instagram @AprilParviz