Monday, September 24, 2012

Vanishing Vermont: Middletown Springs

I am still sorting through all the photos I took about two weeks ago when I was out and about in Rutland County and Granville, NY. As long as your are interested, I will keep sharing my pictures of timeworn beauty.  I think I may have taken almost 600 photos that weekend. That's lots of editing. I'm going to keep chiseling out time to go through them all, location by location.  

This little installment is represents some shots that I took on our way from Middleton Springs to Wallingford. I really like taking t back roads, because you get to see all sorts of wonderful sites. I feel very lucky we had such a beautiful day to go out and explore. 


We stopped at the Mineral Springs Park to check out the Head Springs monument. At one point in the 1850s and 1860s curing waters of newly discovered mineral springs prompting the development of huge hotels and resorts in some of the most remote Vermont locations. Middletown Spring is one such village. The old hotel that sat along the bank of the Poultney River is gone, but the Historical Society has created a sweet little park to mark the location of the Old head spring. You can actually collect water there, although I don't know if what healing effects you might feel.

While we didn't get to see ruins of an old hotel, we did catch some wonderful visions of decay and abandonment on our trek to East to Wallingford. The goldrod was in full bloom lending color to the fields around us. Although the leaves are turning now, they were lush and green only two weeks ago. 

I hope you enjoy this little part on the journey. Until next time....

 



Tuesday, September 18, 2012

New Work: Harvest Home




I am so excited to announce that my new book assemblage: Harvest Home will be featured in a new books arts show at the Chandler Art Center in Randolph, VT called Turning Leaves.

I have been playing with some ideas of how to marry some of the new techniques I have been using with my old assemblage process. The outcome is this new book sculpture: Harvest Home. Influenced by the research I have been doing with old houses and the stories abandoned homesteads carry with them. This piece incorporates 7 found photographs given to me by a local historian of a family that resided in Williston, VT in the late 19th/early 20th century.

The show opens on Sunday with a reception and artist talk.


Turning Leaves: New Directions in Book Arts
Chandler Gallery, Randolph, VT
23 September – 10 November 2012
Reception with Artists’ Talk 4 – 6:30 PM 



















































I will also be showing Hope Blossoms: which is another mixed media book assemblage. This piece recently took 2nd place in the Juried show Books Unbound vol. 2 at the Artistree Gallery in Woodstock, VT.







Saturday, September 15, 2012

Spectral Evidence



Part of the research I am doing in regards to my recent photographic work has been reading up on apparitional experience, ghosts, hauntings and the like. Apparitional experience is, to quote Wikipedia, "an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience. It is characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception." It is the term that the academic and scientist community sometimes use to describe ghosts or hauntings. 

I'm trying to wrap my head around this concept and to understand what actually prompts the "quasi-perceptual experience."  Where does this sensation or feeling about place or a space that it is inhabited by unexplained entities; things that are not of this world, come from?

I have a strong sense of what the generative force is and I have been jotting down summaries and notes from my reading materials so at some point can pull it all together in some cohesive manner.

These are some of my notes from one of the first texts I read, appropriately entitled: Spectral Evidence. 

In his book, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma, Ulrich Baer explores the relationship between the experience of trauma and the photographic image. Baer draws a connection between those moments captured mechanically in photographs and those experienced by the individual through trauma. He uses the Holocaust as a specific example of how extremely difficult and limited it is to represent such monumental trauma. Baer suggests that the photographs become more of a tool of witnessing than that of “viewing”. What resonates for me is Baer’s connection to Roland Barthes, which implies for the viewer there is a response that is prompted by the ghostly afterlife of every photograph's subject.


L Reynolds copyright 2012
Chapter 2
To give memory place

“The aura of the photographed landscape, the impression of proximity, familiarity and relevance in a possibility quite distant scene seems to trip into memory we did not know existed, a counterpart in ourselves we may have felt but did not know.” (79)

“Conceptually and visually, we are subjected to something we recognize as crucially important, though in the end it eludes us.” (79)
L Reynolds copyright 2011
“The tradition of landscape art likewise…imbuing a scene with auratic significance…without… linking this sense of familiarity to any remembered past “ (79)

“framed emptiness” (81)

“Second generations inherit from their predecessors not something that has been learned but something that remains a loss.” (84)

“The medium of photography always raises the question of the relationship between seeing and knowing.” (87)

Quoting Walter Benjamin: “optical unconscious”

From Conclusion:
“…some events attain full meaning only in retrospect or to use the Freudian term, nachtraglich, or belatedly, and how this belated registration may facilitate or block remembering or forgetting.” (181)

“Every photograph is addressed to a beyond that remains undefined.” (181)
L Reynolds copyright 2011

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Vanishing Vermont: Wallingford


We happened on this place a few weeks ago on our way to Manchester. Completely gutted on the inside, the grounds are totally overgrown, looks like someone started restoring it as a project and then gave up.
Form the looks of it, I'd guess it was a mercantile or country store. The sign above the door dates it to 1835. There's several layers of siding that has been pulled away. I'm hoping that whomever ultimately restores this place will find a way to keep the pre-war billboard on the north side of the building.








 

  
Thank you so much for visiting my blog. 
Please remember that I retain the rights to all original photography posted. While I am honored and flattered that you
might enjoy the work enough to want to use or repost other places, please do not do so with out permission. All photos copyright L Reynolds 2012
Thanks! Lorraine



Saturday, September 8, 2012

ROSE INN: GRANVILLE, NY


Gutted down to studs, lonely and waiting for restoration. The Rose Inn in Granville, NY. A beautiful old Victorian that has seen better days. On the market and looking for a new owner...




Thank you so much for visiting my blog. Please remember that I retain the rights to all original photography posted. While I am honored and flattered that you might enjoy the work enough to want to use or repost other places, please do not do so with out permission. All photos copyright L Reynolds 2012
Thanks! Lorraine


American Gothic



AMERICAN GOTHIC

Lorraine Reynolds and Beth Gilmore 
at 
Vintage Inspired Lifestyle Marketplace
 in 
September
The exhibition runs through September 30th. 











Lorraine Reynolds and Beth Gilmore’s American Gothic bridges the distance between past and present, north and south, Reynolds and Gilmore have assembled mixed media work using alternative printmaking and painting processes that speak to the viewer thorough nostalgia and memory, melding a collective past and visions of haunted tales. 




180 Flynn Avenue
Burlington, VT
Monday – Saturday 
10am to 5pm
Sunday 
12pm to 4pm
802-488-5766






Monday, September 3, 2012

VANISHING VERMONT: WHITING

I'm not sure what the original purpose of this building was, meeting hall, grange or one room school house. We drove by just as the sun was setting....

Standing sentry, alone and silent.

Simply beautiful.




Thank you so much for visiting my blog. Please remember that I retain the rights to all original photography posted. While I am honored and flattered that you might enjoy the work enough to want to use or repost other places, please do not do so with out express permission from the artist. 
Thanks! Lorraine

Sunday, September 2, 2012

VANISHING VERMONT: POULTNEY





This past weekend, I have been out in the greater Rutland and Addison county area with camera in hand. It's been a very productive couple of days. I think I have shot well over 400 photos. That said, I have a ton of editing to do. I'll have more photos real soon. I am going to start with some touring we did in Poultney.

In this sleepy little town with it's tree-lines streets and slow paced life, College Street full of grand homes ranging from the 1830s to 1900s. (Some homes in East Poultney are even older than this, dating back to I believe BEFORE the Revolutionary War.)

Some of these old stately residences are being restored and put to good use... others like this old antiques shop are falling into ruins. Poultney came appear to be a picture perfect Vermont college town. But, there is also something not quite right with Poultney, off the beaten path, with only about 3,600 permanent residents. It's as if the town is caught in the past. To say that there is a dark undercurrent to this outwardly serene town would not be a stretch, either. Spend enough time here and you'll find it's a little warped, like Twin Peaks or the Outer Limits. College Street has been the scene of at least 2 grizzly and completely unrelated murders in the past 10 years. Maybe its all the old architecture and overall Gothic feel. Edgar Allen Poe, might have felt very at home here.














Thank you so much for visiting my blog. Please remember that I retain the rights to all original photography posted. While I am honored and flattered that you might enjoy the work enough to want to use or repost other places, please do not do so with out express permission from the artist. 
Thanks! Lorraine