The Darkroom Gallery Exhibit in New Orleans

I so wish I were going to the opening...however, at $500 a pop for airlines tickets I decided to pass. I am sure it will be great fun. I really miss the place!

I came across Joli Livaudais Grisham's work because I am in the show with her . I checked out her website and was impressed by her artist statement...thought I would share it.

Project Statement: Meditations

"I once read that everything in the universe is made from the same kinds of particles, and the only difference between material and spirit is how swiftly those basic components are vibrating. Quantum physicists have demonstrated that particles near each other synchronize, and so paired will move as one even when separated. Isolation and stillness are an illusion. All things are intrinsically linked together in ways mysterious and strange, and seeming differences are really just variations on a theme.

© Joli Livaudais Grisham


When I was young, my mother taught me that God is love and that violence and destruction are constructs of man. Yet when I look around me at the marvelously balanced creation of the universe, I see a system founded in the deaths of the weak and unfortunate. The wheel of creation, maintenance and destruction grinds endlessly, a ravening machine, terrifyingly pure in its lack of concern or gentleness. Yet, it is also beautiful, orderly, a profoundly synchronized web of vibrating particles. Meditations are my conceptual explorations on the mysteries of the machine--the deeper spiritual truth that connects us on the wheel of life and unifies reality.

Byzantine painters used a set of visual symbols to reveal the divine in the mundane. One of the most important of these was the use of gold. Gold gave the work a feeling of material preciousness, while also creating a source of otherworldly luminosity and warmth. They also used ultramarine blue, a rare and expensive pigment, to signify spiritual purity. I print my images in tones of blue and suspend them over 23K gold leaf using resin. By applying these symbolic spiritual elements to a photograph, a process intrinsically rooted in reality, both are interpreted in a new way. The work is experienced as concept and as a physical object, mirroring the duality of spirit and earth."