What’s better than a Friday night? A Friday night with free art and food trucks, of course!

I attended the opening of Metronome at the whitespace gallery in Inman Park.

The show features encaustic paintings by Michele Schuff.

The whitespace blog describes the work:

Schuff captures the invisible process of time through the use of repetitive heat-fused brush strokes and forms, suggesting the metronome as a metaphor for the meditative beat of life’s fleeting moments.

Despite the busy buzz of the opening, I experienced the meditative process described above. The pieces exude subtle changes in shades and textures, lulling the viewer’s gaze around each landscape. If you pause, you can imagine the sounds each painting would make.

There are excellent process photos here. These images help me appreciate the massive effort it must have taken to create this series.

I also enjoyed the parallel show, Hailey Lowe’s “(sub)URBAN GHOSTS,” a video installation and photographs exploring the connection/disconnection between nature, urban environments and technology.

Lowe uses a string at the entrance of whitespace to lead viewers to a compilation of old TVs with grainy, disjointed images of people interacting with animals, their environment and the camera.

The noise and light/dark contrast in the room made me feel uneasy. I feel a similar sense of unease when I think about what we’re doing to the Earth and how quickly technology is moving. Her work asks me to question what it means to live in an urban, technology-addicted society.

Lowe’s work reminds me of stunning photographs I saw a few years ago by Amy Stein. Based in NYC, Stein is a fine photographer and educator. Her series “Domesticated”explores the relationship between wild animals and our constructed habitats.

Stein’s statement about the series is brilliant:

We at once seek connection with the mystery and freedom of the natural world, yet we continually strive to tame the wild around us and compulsively control the wild within our own nature.

The following is just a tiny sampling of my favorite images. Check out the full series here.

Oh yeah, and there were food trucks at whitespace, too. If you’re in Atlanta, help me support the movement!

What do you think about the relationship between our constructed habitats and the natural ones? How can we co-exist with what we find threatening? (My hunch is there are answers to this question in various spiritual texts.)

Or, is all of this too much to think about? Should we just go grab a food truck Popsicle and think about these questions later?