Our first in-person show since the shutdown. The show will have in-person limited hours and reception as well as a virtual tour and virtual talk during the reception.
Resist Convenience
Heather Palecek
March 1, 2021 – April 1, 2021
Reception and Talk on March 9th from 4-8pm (Virtual only | Limited seating is full)
Statement from the Artist
I explore the relationship humans have to mother nature by using historical photographic processes in experimental ways. This has allowed me to discover new approaches in art making where I can collaborate with mother nature to make my work. The photographic materials I choose are placed into the world to be affected by the sun, weather patterns, and other time-based recurrences during the creation of the image.
“Resist Convenience” is an exhibition showcasing a wide breadth of my photographic pursuits: pinhole photography, lumen prints, cyanotypes, site-specific and interactive installations as well as activism work. As a society I believe our desire for convenience is prohibiting us from experiencing life fully, being present in our interactions, having empathy, and living sustainably: I think convenience is killing our humanity and ultimately the Earth. This exhibit ties my philosophy to a few different projects about humans’ relationship with mother nature. You’ll see a series of abstract cyanotypes about climate change made with food waste, yearlong pinhole exposures, a lumen print installation about the negative effect of single-use plastic bags on the environment, as well as a selection of work from my community garden project celebrating the resilience of plants.
I hope you will leave this exhibit thinking about your own relationship to mother nature and how our choices of convenience can impact our relationships with each other and the Earth.
https://heatherpalecek.squarespace.com
Heather Palecek is an analogue photographer and art educator working in the mediums of pinhole photography, lumen printing, cyanotype, and mixed media cameraless photography. Her award-winning work has been exhibited locally and internationally.
She is a graduate of Montclair State University and is currently a high school photography teacher in NJ.
Heather has been working around the theme of relationships and connection for much of her artistic career; Many of her artistic pursuits explore the relationships humans have to mother nature. Her most notable series, “Portraits of Trees”, explores her feeling of kinship with trees. Her recent pinhole work is an inquiry into collaborating with mother nature to create artwork rather than solely making work about her. Other projects are more activist in nature, such as her cyanotypes in “The Ziploc Bag Project”. The common thread within her work is relationships and human impact on the environment, something she feels strongly about.
Statement from the Gallery
Heather Palecek reconnects us to what has always been a fundamental truth about analog photography and that is, making photographs feels like magic.
The inventors of photography were people of science who were experimenting with some of the most basic elements of life and Earth. Elements such as light, water, fire, salts, and precious metals were the building blocks of the alchemy that would become photography. Palecek brings us back to the mystery of those early methods through her incredible knowledge and mastery of the processes that utilize some of those same elements, and that alone is a conversation in itself, but also, that alone does not fully describe her work. Palecek shows us the beauty and phenomena of the ritual passage of time with imagery that can be abstract, impressionistic, and even vernacular, sometimes all at once. By this process and practice of using the elemental forms of photography to show us the beauty and the scars we find in the world, Palecek is reminding us that we need to be mindful of the gifts we have been given by mother nature and to collaboratively work towards preserving, restoring, and as Palecek puts it, “celebrate” our resources before they are too far gone.
-Michael Chovan-Dalton, Gallery Director