Deborah Barndt

I have learned a lot from this experience, and continue to learn as I reflect on it. 

An organic process for an organic product

This whole exhibit unfolded so naturally, as if I was being pulled along through an organic process that I could not control. Perhaps that process echoed the main message of my exhibit: that we are in constant processes of growth and decay, living and dying. Am I only now succumbing to the reality of this journey of transience, of impermanence? 

My co-creators, the trees, are my teachers of this message. If I only take time to look at them, from their roots to their canopy. If I only listen to them. It’s October, my favourite time of year, and I am in awe of their beauty as I walk down my street. While their changes seem more dramatic at this time, they are also constantly changing throughout the year.

Can I love my aging body in the same way I love my aging trees?

As I turned my camera on myself (with John’s help, of course), I became more comfortable with my bulging belly, the veined tributaries of my hands, my mottled arms, my sagging neck, my undulating back, my swollen knees. I felt ready for this and, surprisingly, was not embarrassed by the large images I produced of my bum, boob, and belly button.

I’m touched by comments of several friends who came to the exhibit, and admitted that it helped them confront and accept their own aging bodies, as something more positive….

Organic process – everything was meant to happen – the combination of Wild Soma retreat, JP and Thus Gallery, October for Joshua’s birth and mom’s death, the synergy with Jon and Leonard, John’s ever-present support, the ease with which I could propose 6 showings with specific themes – all based on my passions and with groups of friends. 

It was liberating that my exhibit had no funding, was all self-funded ($1,000 – $1,500) which I could afford because of my pension. It also meant I didn’t have to deal with grants, budgets, receipts, reports, bureaucracy..!

The deeper messages

My deeper motivation as an artist and educator was to show how we humans are nature, not IN nature, but in relationship with all beings and elements. In western capitalist and urbanized culture, most people are disconnected –  from their bodies and from the Earth’s bodies. We live in a youth-obsessed, death-denying culture, and so don’t see natural processes as beautiful at all stages. My hope was that visitors to the exhibit would recognize themselves in a different light, accepting their bodies as integral to nature and natural processes.

Producing the photos pushed me to confront my aging body directly. And I shared intimate parts of my body. It may be taboo, but I felt ready. Though I still don’t always embrace my aging body, I now have another way of seeing it as part of a process, a verb, a me in constant transformation. I’m better able to embrace both the challenges and the beauty of that process.

By framing the exhibit with Wabi Sabi ideas, I have been pushed to learn more about the Japanese aesthetic and Buddhist philosophy, including acceptance of the imperfect and of impermanence. 

Collaborative co-creation

Even though the focus was MY body and MY trees and I developed the juxtapositions and made most aesthetic decisions, I could not have done this without the constant support and co-photography of my partner John, and the brilliant vision, technical support, and co-curation of Alex Gelis. The participation of the two gallery owners Jon and Leonard was also central to the ideas, energy and success of events. While this was perhaps the most personal exhibit I’ve every produced, it was also collaborative at its core.

Each of the events during the six showings also involved collaboration – with other artists, dancers, poets, musicians, really with anyone who was there. The photos became a catalyst for conversation that took many different artistic forms.

Photography’s possibilities and limitations

The process of creating the pieces evolved as I tried to connect with trees and with my body through a camera lens – from experimenting at the Wild Soma retreat with cellphone images to moving on with my DSLR camera, from photographing a BC cedar to focusing on my special trees in Toronto, from producing colour photos to black-and-white.

I loved how the lens allowed me to explore my favourite trees in more intimate ways, almost as if I were caressing them. I have been wanting to develop a more reciprocal relationship with my trees and plants, but did I accomplish that or did I only objectify them further? Do I really relate to my trees differently?

It was also a challenge to capture my own body with a camera, so I had Myream’s help in BC, and later the assistance of my partner John. It was a way of confronting the flabby skin, spots, scars and wrinkles of my ageing body, and I did become more comfortable with my body after this intimate examination. 

But does this focus on body parts reproduce a western notion of the body, fragmented, and separated from the whole body? I remember how the Indigenous participants in a photo workshop I did in Mexico always presented their whole self and in a context, while the non-Indigenous students limited the frame to a face or upper body, only pieces, not the whole.

A lot of the dialogue between body and tree happened as I enlarged and cropped images of both and found echoes of shapes, lines, textures. This involved a lot of screen time, working with a monitor, as well as processing with photoshop and lightroom – a way to create feeling through enlargement, cropping, high contrast 

Early on, I made the decision not to work in colour, which tends to distract from the structural forms. Black-and-white offered more emphasis on lines, texture, and light and shadow shared between bodies and trees. 

It occurred to me that the fact that photographs always capture a frozen moment can’t communicate the ongoing movement of all growing things and the emphasis on transformative processes so central to the message of my exhibit. 

A couple of comments by friends made me realize other limitations of my photographs. First the question of scale. In the collage made of super larger images and very small pairs, the eye is taken from one scale to another, making the viewing more dynamic. But if I really want to portray the micro and the macro, I could send a camera down my throat to capture the inside of my body, and also could send a drone into the sky to get a more wideangle view of the trees and bodies.  

Another factor for me to consider in any future renditons of this exhibit is the immersion in complicated technology. The countless hours spent using Lightroom and Photoshop to create the final prints were exhausting and many times frustrating, due to my lack of technical expertise. I don’t want to spend so much screentime in the future. 

Small is beautiful: tiny gallery, limited hours, specific communities

One of the best aspects of the exhibit experience was set by the limitations of the gallery: its small size and the fact that it wasn’t a commercial gallery so had to be managed by the artist. I used that limitation to schedule only 18 hours of showing, 3 hours on six different days. I gave each day a different theme, and targeted specific audiences. It offered a great way to reconnect with friends from different parts of my life and to share my feelings/ideas/self with small groups of friends. I only promoted it a few days before opening through an email sent to 150 friends, it drew on my large network of friends and didn’t require a lot of planning to get them there (compared to going to a concert or organizing a dinner.)

I loved the serendipity of not knowing who was coming and having surprises (even folks finding each other after years!). It seemed there were always just the right amount of people, filling the room and creating energy. Most days around 20 and over all around 130.

Multiple art forms tap multiple senses and connections

I was inspired when I learned from the gallery owners that previous artists had included music or poetry at their openings. So I developed a list of six themes that also privileged other non-visual forms of art and communication: from the improv movement at the opening by Wild Soma dancers to seven poet friends reading. The Special Tree Day invited people to bring a photo of their favourite tree, and Singing Day brought both professional singers as well as singing friends. Finally the Day of the Dead evening offered a multi-faceted ritual, with people bringing photos and objects of Nature, and sharing both soup and stories. 

I was particularly interested in the interplay of these other art forms and the photos that made up my exhibit. The dancers sometimes connected with specific photos and created movement responses to them. The poetry and songs created an intimate and energizing context, so that conversations around the photos seemed to flow more easily. The Special Tree Day moved the focus from my photos on the walls to incorporate images and stories brought by visitors to the exhibit, enlarging the exhibit and expanding its meaning to other interpretations.

The day after the closing York University’s daily newsletter featured a PhD student who had integrated participatory dance into a ceramic exhibit, suggesting that these art forms were always integrated in Indigenous cultures. Perhaps bringing them together in this way is part of a decolonizing process…!