Ken Hochfeld – Precipice

August 6 – September 20

Walters Cultural Arts Center
527 E. Main Street
Hillsboro, Oregon 97124
The Walters Gallery is free and open from 9 am to 9 pm, Monday through Thursday and 9 am to 5 pm, Fridays.
https://www.hillsboro-oregon.g…

Featuring: Portland photographer Ken Hochfeld, Pacific Northwest collage and mixed media artists Kit S. Carlton, Sam Marroquin, and Tyler Brumfield.

These four artists share diverse perspectives on the impact of the human relationship with our fragile and changing environment.

Hochfeld’s photographs will be selections from his collection “Rock(s)”, a tribute to Terry Toedtemeier.

“Terry Toedtemeier comes to the minds of Pacific Northwest photographers who think about photographs of basalt. Terry’s love for the land, knowledge of geology, and his personal expressions have had a meaningful impact on me as an artist. This work represents a tribute to a friendship I regrettably never experienced.

Basalt is an extrusive igneous rock that flooded the Pacific Northwest 17 to 6 million years ago. Best known for dramatic columns, we also see its subsequent forms in the Pacific Northwest, much of which have been revealed as a result of the great Missoula floods that swept through eastern Washington and the Columbia River Gorge various times more than 12,000 years ago. Dark gray and black in color and rich in an array of tones and shapes, I think basalt tells its stories best in bright sun. Additionally, after much of the year under water, lakeside basalt, when exposed to the summer sun takes on an unusual and rich light gray hue. Basalt can also exhibit fantastic color derived from lichens and moss that find special places to thrive. Madrone Wall Park near the Clackamas River in Carver, Oregon is a prime place to see these surreal colors at their very finest.

Others have written about rocks in ways that best describe my thoughts while making these images:

“I take another look at the stone, run my fingertip over the meticulous brushstrokes, and realize that nothing ever returns to time unless it is stored in mute, voiceless objects; rocks do tell tales after all.”
Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine

“Everything dreams. The play of form, of being, is the dreaming of substance. Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes….”
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

With this work I hope to share the pure artistry, the form, the brushstrokes, and the various tales and dreams of Rock(s) for us all to imagine. I like to think Terry would have approved.”

Ken Hochfeld

www.kenhochfeld.com