OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, November 5, 2011 7-10 PM
ON VIEW: Sunday, November 6 to Sunday, December 31, 2011
HOURS: Thursday & Friday 3-6, Saturday & Sunday 12-6

Following on my recent shows that have used the exhibition space as a book, this show will both mark the release of a new small-edition artist’s book, the ephemera, and translate that book onto the walls of the gallery.

The text of the book and exhibition is drawn from William Bartram’s Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (1791), which describes the travails and wonders of his five-year-long botanical expedition through the South. The book played an important part in the formation of the Romantic sensibility and was a particular favorite of Coleridge and his circle. In the section I’ve drawn from, Bartram is descending a small river and witnesses the spectacle of the hatching of the insect scientists call the Ephemera or dayfly, which rises from the water, flies through the air, mates, and dies, all in the space of one day and in such incredible profusion that their bodies blanket the ground like snow. Through this book and show, I’d like to follow Bartram’s lead and use the life of this delicate and short-lived insect to reflect on the beauty and brevity of our own lives.

James Walsh