Join us for “Here & Then,” an exhibition of books and prints by Boo Gilder on Tuesday, April 26th from 6 to 8 pm in the CCA gallery. The show will be on display through May 20th, 2016. A public reading will feature local guests Boo Gilder, Glenda James, Suzanne McGahey, James Goodwin, Lovell Johnson, Catherine Shelton, Kanita Sturdivant, Jewel Townsend, and Isabel Barnes. Join us for food and drinks! Free! Everyone welcome!
Here & Then is a series of artist’s books that explore the story of a particular place using compiled image and language fragments. By presenting the information in various combinations, the work highlights the shifting ways in which we learn and remember. Each book creates its own viewpoint through cropped images and words, exploring the layers of subjective and objective knowledge that characterize a place and community. As a collection, the 26 individual books construct an accumulated portrait and acknowledge the complexity and flexibility of the whole.
Here & Then focuses on Mt. Meigs, Alabama, a fading rural community just east of Montgomery that has acted as homestead to some portion of the artist’s family since the mid-1800s. The goal is not to celebrate or preserve as much as to examine and acknowledge the existence and influence of a place and community as it shifts with time. Evidence of evolving landscapes, lives lived, and histories amassed, including the artist’s, are the raw material for this work. Sources range from family photographs and letters to conversations and research to original images and writing and are invariably filtered through the artist’s personal experience with the place, its people and landscape.
Also included in this installation of the project are 6 large format photographs overprinted with transparent ink and dirt titled As I Recall. The prints included dirt collected from the Mt. Meigs area, language pulled from a conversation about the local wild produce, and photographs of the landscape. These prints further highlight the bridge between past and the present knowledge and the way things become remembered and interpreted.