Spotlight: Northwest Coast Structures

Artist Statement

These images, taken in 2016 in the Pacific Northwest, demonstrate my interest in using tonalities and arrangements to elicit abstract shapes from natural objects. My art photographs utilize isolation of detail as a tactic to focus attention; I enjoy discovering how realistic contents can be grasped in new ways when guided by the discerning camera lens. I experiment with exposures to explore how perception and perspective articulate. Such landscape designs allow viewers to ponder how objective reality can be perceived in multiple ways. The ambiguities in interpreting some imagery can engage a viewer’s mindset and show the power of the abstract. Many of my photos utilize or evoke water—what can be seen beneath, above, and through this common yet mysterious medium. The fascination of water arises from its ability to change shape and color, to reveal and conceal, and to move with great power yet remain elusive to the grasp—like perception itself.

Jayne Marek Jayne Marek has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and was a finalist in the Ryan R. Gibbs Photography Contest. Her poetry and art photos appear in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, 3Elements, Silk Road, Sliver of Stone, Sin Fronteras, Cold Mountain Review, Peacock Journal, About Place Journal, Spillway, Camas, Central American Literary Review, Flying Island, Tipton Poetry Journal, and New Mexico Review, among others. She has a chapbook, a coauthored collection, and a new full-length poetry book, In and Out of Rough Water (2017), with a second full-length collection slated for release in late 2017.