We might not agree on its value or how best to protect it, but all humans have in common an indisputable physical dependence on and familiarity with the land. We exist not in the air or underwater but on terra firma, which has inspired artists worldwide throughout history. In "Landscape Reimagined," on display through March 31 in the Chase Gallery at Spokane City Hall, two artists represent extreme ends of the spectrum in their approach to the genre of landscape art.
Seattle-based Roxanne Everett's acrylic paintings depict the land in a fairly straightforward, pleasingly stylized manner. Echoing centuries of historical convention, Everett's paintings provide a familiar entry point for viewers, offering landscapes as majestic, sublime and worth preserving.
By contrast, Eastern Washington University photographic lecturer Josh Hobson's work explores landscapes imperiled. Hobson's "Waveforms" and "Uncontained" series are conceptually rooted in his concerns about land use and "climate catastrophe on a personal and a societal level," he says.
"I started appropriating images from various image databases like NASA or U.S. Geological Survey and focusing on areas where there was a lot of environmental chaos or tension or destruction and using those [images] as the basis for these augmented works," says Hobson, who earned both his bachelor's and master's in fine arts at University of Florida.
For example, Irma in Augmented Landscape (After Irma) is Hurricane Irma, which obliterated areas of Hobson's former home state of Florida in 2017. For this artwork, Hobson printed two versions of the same woodland image, one of which he cut into wide, vertical strips. He then layered the images into a 20-by-25-inch, deep-sided wood frame and employed a grid of strings to "lift" portions of the strips of the uppermost image to resemble rippling waves.
The resulting artwork suggests both a topographical "map" of Irma's impact and Hobson's — and by extension, humanity's — potential to create or destroy.
Hobson's "performed" landscapes similarly employ appropriated photographic images cut into strips.
"In the studio one day I picked up one of the pieces I'd cut into strips and hadn't put into the frame yet," explains Hobson, who discovered that as he carried the image, "it unfurled into a gorgeous form."
He rephotographed these three-dimensional forms to create artworks he calls "performed" landscapes, playing on the relationship between real and implied depth.
This accidental artform recaptured the sense of wonder that drew Hobson to photography as a high school student learning traditional darkroom techniques, which involve exposing light-sensitive paper to a projected image and immersing it in chemicals to bring out or "fix" the image.
"I distinctly remember putting that first sheet of darkroom paper into the darkroom developer and watching that image appear and just being overjoyed," Hobson says.
Hobson's other series in the Chase exhibit, "Uncontained," incorporates a "misuse of materials," Hobson says, explaining how exposing certain photo papers to sunlight can yield completely unpredictable yet vibrant colors through the development process.
His "Sunstroke" images resemble solar systems in acid-trip colors and include forest fire images and geometric shapes from actual objects he'd place on the paper — like a photogram — before exposing it to the sun.
Hobson created the "Sunstroke" images during the intense fire season and heat wave of summer 2021, which also informed his process.
"I was out there in the heat and the smoke, thinking about the region and thinking about what was happening," says Hobson, "musing on the sun as this bringer of life but also this potential bringer of death." ♦
"Landscape Reimagined" • Through March 31; open Mon-Fri 8 am-5 pm • Chase Gallery • 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • spokanearts.org • 509-321-9416
