I’ve been working through my orchard images, and saw there is an open call for gallery submission at a local gallery that my work fits the theme of. I am limited to only four pieces, so I’m trying to tell the story in fewer frames, which is challenging.
Here is my artist’s statement:
Graham’s U-Pick Farm in Umatilla, Florida is a working peach orchard operated by fifth generation farmers. This series documents a single growing season through the lens of climate instability: a rare late frost that required emergency irrigation to protect the blossoms, a level three drought that forced artificial watering through the late spring, and finally the harvest that completed despite those pressures.
The orchard exists at the friction point between human management and natural systems. The irrigation infrastructure visible throughout this work is intentional. It represents the farmer’s active, mechanical response to climate conditions that generations ago would have been anomalies. The frost protection system running in January, the drought irrigation running in May. The same water doing different work in different crises across the same season.
These images were made at an intimate scale because climate change is experienced intimately before it is understood statistically. A frozen blossom. A fallen peach returning to the soil. A child dissolving into irrigation mist on her last visit to this place. The orchard as a document of what is changing and what persists.
Self Critique
I want to tell the full story of the orchard, including the ecological story of the orchard floor as it’s often the smallest in the ecosystem that are first affected by changing climate. Would this set be stronger if it only focused on orchard + human intervention + water?
Creative Direction
Like all my recent work, I want this to represent time and memory. I’d also like these images to have an emotional reading.
Specific Feedback
I would like feedback for a gallery exhibition submittal. Any advice from those that have entered or been featured in an exhibition would be greatly appreciated.
Your artist statement is genuinely strong, especially the line about climate change being experienced intimately before it is understood statistically. Frame that one and put it on the gallery card. It is the sort of sentence that makes a juror sit up slightly straighter in their chair.
On your main question. In a four image set I would, with the greatest respect, stay disciplined. Orchard plus human intervention plus water is already a precise thesis, and adding the ecological floor as a third axis is the curatorial equivalent of bringing a third cousin to a dinner party set for four. The fallen peach is a lovely image, but on its own it rather wanders in from another exhibition. The exception is if you use it as the closing whisper, the polite cough after the louder frames have had their say. That can work beautifully.
Of the five shown, frames one and two are doing very nearly the same job, and a four piece edit really cannot afford polite redundancy. Pick the one you love marginally more and let the other live to fight another day. The icicle image is your cornerstone, the clearest statement of water doing different work in different crises, and frankly the picture a juror will remember on the train home. Build the wall around it. The darker wider view is your subtlest, the introvert of the group, and will need confident neighbours to make itself heard.
Your statement also mentions a child dissolving into irrigation mist, which is not in the five. If that image exists at this standard it almost certainly belongs in the four. A figure, even a ghosted one, would carry the generational dimension the statement currently only promises.
A few practical notes. Treat the four as a sentence rather than a list, and submit your hanging order if the form allows, because leaving sequencing to chance is a small act of self sabotage. Title each piece with care. Untitled 03 leaves emotional weight on the table for no good reason. Print at a respectful midsize on matte or cotton paper. These images do not need to be the size of a small caravan to be taken seriously. The sepia treatment is doing real work, quietly placing a climate subject in conversation with the agricultural archive of the early twentieth century, which is rather clever, and worth a sentence somewhere so the juror notices on purpose rather than by luck.
Strong project. Four will sharpen it, not shrink it. Now go and submit it before you talk yourself into adding a fifth.
Hi Sebastian, thank you for such a thorough and thoughtful response!
Having the orchard floor as a quieter closing could make sense almost as a ‘to be continued’ frame. I know I need to work on editing things down to make more of an impact, it’s just so hard to sideline certain pieces. More discipline and practice needed there for sure.
Images 1 and 2 are meant to share a frame as a diptych. The child is in image 1 which will be on top of image 2, so it speaks to presence vs. absence, one frame more human/memory/social centered, the other more labor/mechanical centered.
I agree on the names and the paper choice. I’m going to be using secondhand frames and matboard that is a discard from another artist’s project as part of the climate conscious conversation.
Thank you again for taking the time to review the work. I really appreciate it!
This feels like a wonderful exhibition and I think your artist statement and project description work wonderfully. I don’t have much to add to what Sebatien has said, but I will suggest the following:
I’m not sure the Diptych idea works for me in this context. If you want to include a diptych, would it make more sense to use the child with irrigation and the peach on the ground. There is, I hesitate to say it, but a kind of parallel future there. Dark, yes, but that’s part of the point. Alternatively, I’m not sure the peach image computes for me. I can’t tell (in sepia tone) what I’m looking at. Is there a better peach image in your files? If not, in this diptych usage of it, we get a sense of something at the end of its life, regardless of what it is, and that pairs symbolically with someone at the start of her life.
Of the 5 images, image 1 and 5 are the strongest. Image 4 and 5 pair up to tell a story, and perhaps they should be the starting images: Drought, Freeze, followed by Child, followed by something else, perhaps peach on the ground.
I hope I didn’t blow this up too much. I think you have a great idea, and I think most of these images can work. I would be inclined to keep 3 of the 5 and find two others that are more clearly directive for the viewer.
Do you have time to show us some alternatives? If not, just go for it. We have a high bar at NPN, and I personally can find a problem with virtually everything, including where my toaster sits on the counter-top, so feel free to disregard this and go full speed ahead!
Hi Marylynne, thank you for your suggestion on the diptych using the fallen peach image. I tried it and think it will tell the story better than the pairing that I had. On the peach, I test printed after posting here and it was a little hard to read, so I adjusted the brightness in PS and now the image is more legible. The submission deadline is Thursday this week, so I’ll work with what I have and submit only three works.
Image 5, The Freeze was selected for the group gallery exhibition. My first group show in 20 years, and the first for my photography. How has the time gone by so fast?! Thank you for your helpful comments. I’m looking forward to taking more baby steps back toward the art world after such a long hiatus.
