Ruth West

Covid has been a time of quiet reflection. A time of sitting still and watching the pugs. Never have the words “let sleeping dogs lie” made more sense. If we hold hard, stop and stay still, maybe just maybe we will be safe. My thoughts turn to gratitude, a warm house, good food, a loved one, and dogs. Good internet so I can reach students, friends, and family. Most days I feel blessed. I recognize this is a scary time in the world, but it is also a time to stop and be in our everyday.

scenes from the Amherst Bulletin

These art pieces touch the non-verbal part that comes with seeing. Each piece hovers on the edge of a full story. Linear time is suspended by mysterious, dreamlike elements offering glimpses of a story that is just out of reach. Photography of the late 1800’s contained a process of making photos on lacquered iron called tintypes. This method was used to capture a wide variety of settings and subjects, as it required minimal drying time. It documented time both mysterious and mundane, from civil war battles to carnival souvenirs. All had an eerie other world feeling, as the final photographs seemed to appear and disappear in puckered and cracked black and white.

antique photos are combined with language as mysterious as the women themselves. I wanted to make the viewer really look at these women. To bring the figures out of the faded sepia tin-types and into the light, I combined the images with text in order to bring the viewer more deeply into the picture. i

I’ve been thinking a lot about Venice the last couple of years, visualizing the water and the light. There seems to be intangible something about the place, both ancient and new, grand and tacky that makes me want to spend time stitching images together, building a digital series. Wells Beach, Maine has the same feeling to me - light and water in a place that is defined by the sea. Both are mysterious and mundane, populated and yet full of secret corners. They are far apart, but like everything in this small world, related by time and tide.