Susan Wides - Visual Artist | Environmental Art - Kaaterskill




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Voice of Silence I
Voice of Silence II
And something happens to the light
This: seasons
Arachnoid
I, Kaaterskill
I, Manahatta
Fresh Kills
Mobile Views
The Name of And
Waxworld
Books

After I made the image of a car graveyard Near Catskill Creek in 2004, I learned Thomas Cole had painted Catskill Creek in an adjacent spot in 1845. This coincidence inspired the series I, Kaaterskill, weaving a dialogue between an
American wilderness idealized by mid-19th century painters and the imperiled environment we live in today. When I first showed these early photographs, I paired them with reproductions of Hudson River School paintings made in the same vicinity.

This inquiry into the forces that animate a place is a through-line in much of my work. I’m inspired not only by the historic and cultural
influences that vibrate in a setting, but how we gather up these bits of data to form an idea of a landscape—or as Merleau-Ponty
writes of Cezanne, to depict “an object in the act of appearing, organizing itself before our eyes.” These words articulate my desire to capture the immersive act of beholding: through manipulations of light and space in my photographs, I seek to slow down the moment of observing so we can see deeply into the meaning of a landscape and contemplate where we are.

Olana [January 9, 1998]