Opening Reception: The Sun Sets Midafternoon by Jessica Hays

Join us to celebrate the opening of The Sun Sets Midafternoon, a photography exhibition by artist Jessica Hays! As always, this opening reception is free and open to the public. The Holter bar will be on site.

About the Exhibition:

“Driven by a deep love for the land, I am working with concepts of land use, degradation, and restoration. My practice investigates intersections between climate change and psychology, using environmental phenomenon such as fire, drought, or the appreciation of empty space as a lens to examine how land influences the human psyche, ranging from a site of trauma to a space for respite and healing.

Rooted in the American West, I grew up experiencing climate change accelerate all around me, and came to understand some of these changes not only in terms of their scientific and ecological impacts, but also the personal and social changes they create. Parallel to this awareness of change is an intuitive connection to my surroundings and deep love for the places I inhabit—both short and long term.

Emotional and existential distress caused by negative environmental change is a key component to my work. This experience, described by the word solastalgia, is generally felt by people with close, lived experiences of the land they inhabit, and represents a way of understanding grief in relation to landscape and place. It serves as useful framework for a way to express the intense grief I have felt in the wake of wildfires in my hometown and on the former banks of desiccated rivers.

Working with such topics as grief and loss of landscape takes a heavy emotional toll. I am connected to the places I live in and find myself longing for more time spent in recognition of the sense of solace, joy, and belonging that can still be derived from the landscapes I am most familiar with. The impacts of the Anthropocene have already infiltrated much of the land I am connected to, shifting it in both clear and subtle ways. In addition to making images expressing the grief and loss of landscape, another part of my artistic practice involves making images that are meditations of empty space, about the ways I experience the land and belong to the landscapes I inhabit. Collectively, I am always working at reconciling the land as both a place of joy and of grief.

My photographs are engaged with ideas of the sublime and awe, recognizing both the fear and wonder that can be derived from climate disasters and the land in of itself. The allure of these images are at the same time how they become powerful messengers. Certainly, people must look at the pictures long enough to care about the disasters they depict. In recognizing the aesthetic value of these images, we are also recognizing that sometimes terrible events have beautiful results, and that the earth, even while trying to rectify the mess humanity has made, is putting on a show, one so desperately stunning and terrifying that we cannot bear to look away.

People who feel a connection to any part of the earth or nature are well equipped to strongly empathize with the idea that the planet as a whole is their home, and can find endemic destruction in any area disturbing. As more parts of the earth become damaged and polluted, experiences of positive emotions in relationship to the earth become more difficult. And so we are left with more and more solastalgia, more and more climate grief. Even as we seek out solace in nature, it is less able to provide such relief. If grief is the price we pay for love, then to love the land in these times is to always be grieving.”

Image: Jessica Hays, Mullen, 2021. Archival pigment print.