2021 Blue Sky/Sitka Resident: Kelda Van Patten
Kelda Van Patten
Fern Mania
In the Victorian era, extreme admiration of ferns, or ‘vegetable jewelry,’ was a wildly popular fad (pteridomania). This excessive appreciation of ferns, known as fern mania, fern craze, or fern fever, led to an abundance of derivative production, an explosion of kitsch. I am interested in the melancholy embedded in kitsch, how it incites longing and desire while disguising loss, and how it alters how we see and experience the natural world.
These photography-based works are from a new series, Fern Mania, that I started in October 2021 at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology during a month-long Blue Sky/Sitka Photography Residency. I merged dozens of photographs of the [Sitka Spruce-Western Hemlock] forest understory with simulacra and kitsch. My process started with a handheld speed light and various colored gels to take pictures of mushrooms, banana slugs, and western sword fern fronds, one of the most abundant understory plants. The images were then printed, cut up, and taped to an artificial Boston fern that I used as an armature and placed against a black velvet backdrop. I lit the entire tableaux with strobe lights and re-photographed the temporary construction with a couple of different lenses. I also added layers to the pictures in post-production, where the photograph merges with digital material. Through these iterations, I challenge myself and the viewer to question perceptions of nature, kitsch, and what we think we are seeing while imagining something beyond.
This exhibition is supported in part by a generous grant the artist received from the Regional Arts & Culture Council.
