Dialogues Between Natural/Unnatural

Every year I participate in the Eastside Culture Crawl, an open studio tour with options for other exhibitions.

“This year’s exhibition, Surfacing, will harness the creative force gestated in this pandemic period and chronicle the new directions of recent works. This pandemic has been a unique time of introspection and solitude and artists have taken this opportunity to break complacency, reignite passions and discover unforeseen thematic and artistic possibilities.”

This speaks to me very much as for my 2020 Photos in Review I wrote:

My COVID walks were along back alleys, side streets and busy thoroughfares, by myself, with no rest stops with a friend for coffee or happy hour. I doubt very much I’ll be writing those up.“

1. Abstract diptych of corrugated metal with fissured tree bark. (8 votes)

During the COVID winter there’s even less to photograph in Vancouver. Desperately needing some way to entertain myself I started taking macros of tree bark along with abstract textures found on various urban debris (crusty dumpsters, used concrete forms, scratched lampposts).

2. Soul Mates. A diptych of a particularly crusty dumpster having a conversation with some fissured Birch bark. (8 votes)

While going through my photos in early 2021 I noticed a commonality between the details of these two very different items, and started combining them into diptychs.

3. Abstract of telephone pole covered with torn and stapled posters combined with an image of the shaggy tree bark of what I think is a young Spruce. (6 votes)

4. Abstract combo collage of tree bark with splotches of white fungi combined with a rusty dumpster. (6 votes)

5. Abstract combo collage of tree bark with orange lichen combined with the other side of the same rusty dumpster as above. (2 votes)

6. A fallen tree ‘collaged’ with a rusty cement mixer. (3 votes)

7. Indecipherable Script. A combo of a dumpster with graffiti and a fallen tree, debarked, with insect tunnels. The patterns made by insects always look like some ancient script or runes (and who knows, they may be trying to tell us something), and graffiti also seems to be a modern form of some indecipherable script. (12 votes)

8. A dialogue between the dotted shadow of a perforated steel stairway and trees whose bark is splotched with white lichen and green algae.

9. The top image of a wavery reflections of a dark tree in a pool in the Pacific Spirit Park combined with cracked paint on a dumpster. (4 votes)

10. Transition to Spring. Upon the arrival of spring I moved from focussing exclusively on bark and included these Pussy Willow catkins by the local duck pond as a compliment to the used concrete form ‘art’. (12 votes)

11. Diptych of a weathered skateboard spray-painted with pink spots on it combined together with cherry trees in full blossom just off Broadway. Spring was a lot more colourful than winter. (5 votes)

To participate in the exhibit I need to select three of these and print them for the submission. It’s expensive to print so I would really like some help choosing which of these to go with. Any suggestions as to your fave would be much appreciated!