Watermark

Time passes. Listen. Time Passes.

The imagery in the Watermark installation derives from an ongoing study of Elmira, N.Y.’s Lackawanna Bike Trail, my inexhaustible neighborhood source for artistic inspiration. A year of my life unfolded in 2016-17 as I rode my bicycle on this trail, capturing the seasonal change in a series of Instagram photo grids, video and traditional silver prints.

In the spring of 2018 I turned to abstraction as a way to further investigate change. After digitally scanning a watercolor sketch I had painted of an open grassy field along the bike trail, I playfully modified colors and juggled arrangements to explore relationships between the parts and the whole. Spin-offs of the original watercolor created an eerily morphing, imaginary world of abstraction.

Additionally, I continued to reflect on the abstract beauty and mystery of the bike trail through experimental video. The Lowman Crossover extension opened late in the fall of 2017, creating nearly nine miles of ever-changing shapes, colors, textures, sounds, and movement for capture, mostly with my iPhone. Photographing this lush river path generated a familiar, yet strange, reality for me. The Watermark installation is evidence of my enduring fascination with the surreal, small town America I have found in my own backyard.

Jan Kather

July 2018