Comments from Jurors Debe Arlook and Fred Brashear Jr.:

"Seeing the artist's hand and creating a unique perspective intrigues us. It is readily apparent that the artist spent great contemplation creating this multi-layered photo-based landscape narrative and how this work directly aligns with our theme. We are curious about the intentions behind the various techniques employed, the colors of thread and tape used by the artist, and who your influences are. The potent mixture and layers of thriving and decomposing landscapes with mixed media create a strong narrative about the state of our planet. Congratulations to the maker!"

Donna Bassin says of her series Environmental Melancholia, “These are a series of photo-based landscapes in response to the environmental crisis and the psychological impact of our changing landscape. These images witness Earth’s vulnerability and losses of land, animal, and plant life.  Inspired by the histories of landscape painting, the photographs are idyllic at first glance, but closer looks disrupt the sublime, unsettle perceptions that our natural world is ongoing as usual, and visually transform traditional topographies and expected landscapes.

The new surfaces created ask viewers to question what they see. Each constructed landscape comprises two layered images from different locations. I physically layer one photograph onto another, linking the two through a color relationship or composition, for example, a mountain’s curve to a line in a stream, and attach them with photo corners, Japanese Washi mending tape, or embroidery thread. I name the longitude and latitude of each, erasing geopolitical borders, creating a global narrative, and underscoring the responsibility and collective stewardship we share for the land. In some images, photo corners recollect a past practice and hint at a hypothetical future in which the remnants of our natural world exist only as distant memories reminiscent of nostalgic postcards from a vanishing past. In others, as Earth is devastated and we lose fertile land, animals, birds, rivers, trees, and glaciers, I tear natural resources from one photographic scene and transfer them to a depleted landscape image, enacting a reparative process of injury and restoration.

Donna Bassin is a photo-based artist, filmmaker, clinical psychologist, educator, and published author born in Brooklyn, New York, and now living in New Jersey. Her long-term projects respond to harmful aspects of contemporary life: post-traumatic stress, racism, social injustice, and, recently, the destruction of our environment. She received a 2024 Puffin Foundation Artist Grant and a 2021 New Jersey Council on the ArtsFellowship for photography, was a Finalist in Critical Mass 2023, and was one of the Top 50 Photographers for Critical Mass 2022.
 
Environmental Melancholia, her series illuminating and aiding the community in grappling with the complexities of the climate crisis, was recently in Groundingat Ki Smith Gallery, Double Exposure and Two By Two Media at the Carter Burden Gallery, and The Fat Canary in Ceres Gallery in New York. The series has been recognized in Critical Mass 2023 and 2022 and was featured in the accompanying exhibition, Imminent Existence, at Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle. Other notable group inclusions have been Klompching Gallery’s FRESH 2022, Montclair Art Museum’s Inspired by George Inness: Life and Landscape, and Jersey City’s Art Fair 14C. It has been featured in several publications and periodicals, including Overlapse’s Stir the Pot, The HAND Magazine, Borderline Press’s Facsimile, Dodho Magazine, Vostok Magazine, Analog Forever Magazine, FLOAT Magazine, LandEscape Art Review, and LifeFramer Magazine. A solo exhibition is planned for Winter 2025 at the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island.
 
Her portrait series, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair, is now on view as a solo exhibit at Mira Forum in Porto, Portugal. The series was also exhibited in 2023 at the Espaço D’Artes Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal, the Soho Photo Gallery in New York, and the Passaic County Arts Center in New Jersey. It was recently featured in Picturing the Constitution at The Old Stone House of Brooklyn. A film adaptation of this series will be included in New Jersey Arts Annual: Exploring Our Connections at the Montclair Art Museum in Fall 2024. It has been highlighted in multiple publications, including Portugal’s PsiRelacional, Fotonostrum Magazine, Grazia Magazine, One Twelve Publishing, Aint-Bad Magazine, and Lens Magazine.
 
By Our Own Hand, a collaboration with New Jersey’s Frontline Arts, was shown at the Montclair Art Museum. Precious Scars, another photo-based installation, was exhibited at the Jamestown Arts Center in Rhode Island. Other installations have appeared at the Newark Museum of Art, Smack Mellon, SaveArtSpace, and Mills Reservation. Donna has directed and produced two award-winning, feature-length documentaries about coming home from war: Leave No Soldier and The Mourning After. The Afterlife of Dolls, a solo exhibition at Montclair Art Museum, was featured on PBS’ State of the Arts.
 
IMAGES FOR SALE:

Precarious Places.8 - 24" H x 35" W
Archival pigment print, rice paper, Sashiko embroidery thread
$1500 (unframed)
Limited edition of 5
Signed on front


Precarious Places.27
Archival pigment print, rice paper, Sashiko embroidery thread
$1500 (unframed)
Limited edition of 5
Signed on front


Precarious Places.41
Archival pigment print, rice paper, MT Washi tape
$1500 (unframed)
Limited edition of 5
Signed on front


Precarious Places.47
Archival pigment print, rice paper, MT Washi tape
$1500 (unframed)
Limited edition of 5
Signed on front


Precarious Places.77
Archival pigment print, rice paper, Sashiko embroidery thread
$1500 (unframed)
Limited edition of 5
Signed on front


Precarious Places.78
Archival pigment print, rice paper, Sashiko embroidery thread
$1500 (unframed)
Limited edition of 5
Signed on front

Contact: Donna Bassin, dibassin@gmail.com

www.donnabassin.com
www.instagram.com/p1nhole.donnabassin



TIME & WISDOM OF THE LAND HOME PAGE:
https://laphotocurator.com/time-and-wisdom-of-the-land-curated-by-debe-arlook-and-fred-brashear-jr-

FIRST PLACE: 
https://laphotocurator.com/time-and-wisdom-of-the-land-curated-by-debe-arlook-and-fred-brashear-jr-/first-place-prescott-moore-lassman-al-fresco-bathtub---/1

SECOND PLACE:
https://laphotocurator.com/time-and-wisdom-of-the-land-curated-by-debe-arlook-and-fred-brashear-jr-/second-place-thomas-ladd-san-carlos----/1

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
https://laphotocurator.com/time-and-wisdom-of-the-land-curated-by-debe-arlook-and-fred-brashear-jr-/honorable-mentions-edward-montgomery-kinetic-ambiguity-66036-martin-cox-no-trace-01-bremner-benedict-willow-artesian-spring-fed-creek----/1

BEST SERIES:
https://laphotocurator.com/time-and-wisdom-of-the-land-curated-by-debe-arlook-and-fred-brashear-jr-/best-series-donna-bassin-series-environmental-melancholia-precarious-places----/1

EXHIBITION #1:
https://laphotocurator.com/time-and-wisdom-of-the-land-curated-by-debe-arlook-and-fred-brashear-jr-/exhibition-1/1

EXHIBITION #2:
https://laphotocurator.com/time-and-wisdom-of-the-land-curated-by-debe-arlook-and-fred-brashear-jr-/exhibition-2/1

EXHIBITION #3:
https://laphotocurator.com/time-and-wisdom-of-the-land-curated-by-debe-arlook-and-fred-brashear-jr-/exhibition-3/1