Susan Dunkerley
• 617 N. 34th Street • Waco, Texas 76710 • H: 254.754.0187 • W: 254.710.6388 • susan@susandunkerley.com
Transmit
1a: to send or transfer from one person or place to another: forward b: to cause or allow to spread: as (1) : to convey by or as if by inheritance or heredity (2) : to convey (infection) abroad or to another 2a (1): to cause (as light or force) to pass or be conveyed through space or a medium (2) : to admit the passage of <glass ~s light> b: to send out (a signal) either by radio waves or over a wire.
My photographs document collages and sets constructed in or near my studio windows. Each constructed set is temporary -- waiting for light, existing for the camera. The images are photographed quickly with a view camera using Type 55 Polaroid film to allow for working intuitively and quickly. Photography’s ability to manipulate scale, perspective and space continues to challenge and inspire my work. The precision of photography calls forth the power of visual imagery to enchant and to set the imagination in motion. The images and inspiration do not stray far from the routines of daily life, and from the window and the garden, although what I have been reading - verse or prose - will influence my choices. The window location has begun to take form in the work.
I am now using glass as the substrate for gelatin-silver prints. I sandblast simple images, object silhouettes and vines into the opposite side of the 1-inch thick glass. Each window-like piece is suspended from the ceiling by a steel cable. The collective creates a grove visitors may freely enter and exit. Like a garden, the installation called “Transmit” invites entrance, and offers refuge and replenishing. Inside the grove a permeable, lyric realm exists. Transparency allows for looking within, between, through and beyond the actual surfaces. Like the window, the garden is a nexus, providing both literal and metaphorical connections between interior and exterior space, between the cultivated and the wild. Somewhere within this vined and brambled landscape lie traces of the heart’s desires. Making the work is a way of seeking balance, measure and perspective.