What is the line between the natural world and the one made by human beings?
How does it shift or fade or harden?
What is the story of a place, its flora, fauna, ephemera, and people?
What does it mean to perceive?
To grapple with the minutest details while taking in an entire expanse?
These are the questions Charlotte Bassin, John Driscoll, and Pam Rogers contend with. They tell stories rooted in the specificity of a place that reach beyond boundaries — whether literal or metaphorical. They pay homage to the earth and its mysteries through close observation, delicate tension, and poetic juxtaposition. They create a twofold perception by honing the viewer’s eye on the smallest detail while simultaneously expanding the viewer’s point of view.
As a result, their work embodies duality: the natural and the human-made; the macro and the micro; the abstract and the figurative; the organic and the geometric. It is in the numerous ands that the richness of their narratives come to pass, a constant dialogue that continually transforms itself from one moment to the next.
About the Artists
Pam Rogers
Pam creates compositions informed by place. She literally pulls inspiration from the earth and uses soil, minerals, and plants to develop her pigments. Pam weaves together botanical watercolor painting with an elegant abstraction and masterful use of negative space. Her works examine growth as much as decay, speaking to the natural cycle as much as humankind’s influence. She sees each piece as a narrative map that captures not just the elements of a place but also its essence.
John Driscoll
John’s work combines topographical maps from the United States Geological Survey with photorealistic paintings of that location’s wildlife. This exhibition features three North American bird portraits, two Western bluebirds and a bald eagle (not shown). The exquisite rendering of the birds and, in the case of the bluebirds, their perches, mimics the detailed lines of the topographic map. The striations of the map echoed in each bird’s plumage,the weathered texture of the wood, the hard, metallic edges. John delivers a bird’s eye view of the land and a scientist’s eye of the bird.
Charlotte Bassin
Charlotte combines natural and human-made souvenirs and found detritus—acorns, stones, seashells, feathers, driftwood, safety pins, keys, locks, bottlecaps—to create borderless world maps that tell stories greater than the sum of its parts. Each item tells its own unique story while contributing to the larger narrative. A narrative driven by cohesion, interconnectedness, and harmony. A narrative centered this planet and its wonders, its inhabitants, its treasures, no matter how big or small.