Tag Archives: @southdakota

In my blood and bones.

the prairie and the sea…

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Beginning about 540 million years ago, the first of many shallow inland seas ushered in the Paleozoic and later the Mesozoic eras.

Shallow ocean waters covered a significant part of the interior of North America, including the region we recognize as the Great Plains. —Encyclopedia of the Great Plains

I feel a certain soul-settling when experiencing the wonders of the PRAIRIE and the SEA. I’ve been exploring why I am so drawn to wide-open landscapes.

My ancestors left Europe, landed on the eastern shores of North America, and headed west, eventually settling on the plains of southern South Dakota. I moved in a reversed migratory pattern—leaving the plains and settling in New England after living and working in New Zealand, Australia, Tennessee, and Montana.

I think my inherent nature, choices, circumstances, travel, and understanding all have played roles in why certain landscapes speak to me so profoundly. My native Nebraska friend, artist Elizabeth Bunsen and I refer to this as our interior geography. LINK: elizabeth bunsen’s instagram

I will forever be gnawing on the bone of my genetic inheritance and wondering if my ancestors also needed a lot of space to feel settled within themselves.

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion…the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.

—Dorthea Lange, photographer/journalist/my hero

ghosts & ruins…

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The spark for this series was the moment I noticed that a photo of the stairwell in my home fit with an image from an abandoned farmhouse I shot in South Dakota a few years ago. Seeing the old and new images just hit me about the sense of time and place we all possess. One day perhaps our stairwell will be photographed as ruins.

The stories that ruins of all types whisper to me about history, humanity, grit, and heartache have sparked my interest and been a muse to me since I was a child.

photo by my niece, Mana Parker

I love the way you can feel the soul of old houses and the area surrounding the properties. I just had to put myself in these places again—PHOTOSHOP allowed me to make this happen.

My daughter, Willa’s photographic eye provided the theatrical images of me taken on Halloween in 2021. My costume goal was: the ghost of a silent film star. I’m not often wearing a gown, or pearls, and sipping champagne. Well, not nearly often enough actually.

Whoever she is, she’s got a story to tell, I just don’t know quite what it is yet.

ruins: the remains of something destroyed

—Merriam Webster

Thank you, photographers, Willa, Mana, and the people who once inhabited this beautiful South Dakota farmhouse. If only the walls could truly talk.

Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.  —Andy Warhol