Jon Gottshall, Scale

April 5-28
Opening: April 5, 6-9pm

Gallery 114
1100 NW Glisan, Portland OR 97209
(503) 243-3356
Gallery hours: Thurs-Sun, 12-6pm
contact@gallery114pdx.com
www.gallery114pdx.com

“Scale” is my homage to landscape photographers of the past, those who have celebrated the humbling vastness of the land around us and yet also made it seem tactile and accessible. Names are too many to mention, but let it rest for now on the shoulders of Timothy O’Sullivan, Carlton Watkins, W.H. Jackson and Edweard Muybridge. Their photographs convey wonder at the spaces before them and of their own smallness. The sense of being tiny in a vast world has always moved me, and in these images I attempt to carry that tradition forward.

My goal in these images in not just to document, in as visceral way as I can, the size and scale of the landscape, but to also use the photographs as the first step in a creative process. Starting with the photograph itself, I print onto clear, non-absorbent acetate, which allows the ink to remain fluid. It moves and interacts or stays distinct according to it’s own viscosity. The longer I wait, the more the image is altered. I repeatedly scan these transformed images and incorporate them into the original photo file. The variability that results is an organic addition to the digital process, which I find an immensely interesting form of inquiry.

jongottshall@msn.com
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