Show Opening: Wolf Fork Canyon Study

Sheehan Gallery presents
Wolf Fork Canyon Study: The photography of Tara J. Graves

January 31 — April 10, 2020

Whitman College Breezeway Gallery, Olin Hall

Walla Walla native Tara J. Graves received her BFA in Photography (with a focus in fine art) from San Francisco's Academy of Art University in 2013. Drawing inspiration from her surroundings Graves professional fine art portfolio contains series in the genres of night photography, landscape, architecture, water, and topography. In addition to her personal creative practice, Graves has been a professional photographer for the Walla Walla Foundry. Currently, she is the Assistant to the Sheehan Gallery. Graves also owns and operates Walla Walla's ArtEscape Studios, which provides exhibition and work spaces for local artists.

In 1928, in the Blue Mountains outside of Dayton, WA, Graves' great grandfather purchased land at Wolf Fork Canyon. Here, he built a one room log cabin next to Wolf Fork Creek. This cabin and the landscape around it featured significantly in Grave's youth as a place of awe and inspiration and as a seasonally shifting sanctuary for wildlife and human wanderers.

After seventeen years living and working in San Francisco, Graves returned to Walla Walla in 2014. Spending time once again at the family cabin and surrounding area, she found herself just as fascinated by the Wolf Creek environment as she did in childhood. Of course, the landscape had been significantly changed by natural elements in the years she was away. "Water and fire," she says, "had been particular sculptors." Gripped by a desire to document this rediscovered landscape as she encounters it between nature's shifts, Graves began what's become her ongoing Wolf Fork Canyon Study series. In terms of her photographic practice, this project has taken Graves in a new direction. 

Historically, the landscapes she captured were generally urban and their compositions focused more on monumental scenic expanses. In the Wolf Fork Canyon Study series, however, traditional landscape shots are accompanied by macro shots, revealing minute details held within the main image. For Graves "incorporating this macro photography into the studies takes me deeper into the larger landscape -- within inches of these secondary subjects. It leads me to explore the land differently than I normally would and causes me to pay more attention to individual and even more temporal details.

In addition to these landscapes and their companion images, Graves has included in her Wolf Fork Canyon Study a series of water triptychs that also employ a macro sensibility. In these pieces the camera's ability to record and isolate the Creek's movement and flow produces compositions that become almost painterly in their varying degrees of abstraction. 

Sheehan Gallery is located in Olin Hall on Whitman College campus. The gallery is free and open to the public. 

Open Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 12:00-5:00pm, Saturday/Sunday, 12:00-4:00pm or by Appointment.

Please visit www.whitman.edu/sheehan for more information, or call 509327.5249 or 509.527.5992