Lisa Redburn
Folding Time
What happens when a two-dimensional photograph becomes a three-dimensional object in space? How does physically interacting with a printed photograph reshape the experience it originally captured? These questions flow through my mind as I create dodecahedrons — 12-sided solids — that echo the sense of wonder I experience when immersed in the natural world.
I begin by choosing fragments of photographs from places that have moved me: surfaces layered by time, changing skies, huge glaciers, deep waters. I then join these pieces, connecting different times and places. As I work, I feel as if I’m traveling again, and moving backward and forward in time. And I marvel at the unexpected relationships that emerge among far-flung locations. Stone surfaces from Patagonia, Iceland, Utah, Maine, New Zealand, and Scotland intersect to form one 12-sided paper “stone”; waters from Canada, Alaska, Cape Cod, Botswana, and New Jersey flow into each other.
My dodecahedrons invite viewers to engage with photographs in novel ways. You can’t perceive one image without also seeing the others. There are many sides, but no end, no top or bottom, no left or right. You can view them from multiple perspectives, or interact with them in a tactile way — holding a weightless rock, flowing water, or endless sky in your hand.
When I use the dodecahedrons as building blocks for more complex objects or scenes, I add another layer to the tension between familiar and unfamiliar. And when they are suspended, the suggestive forms and gentle movements bring an interactive energy that echoes the ever-changing nature of memory, and the ebb and flow of experience.
In designing, folding, manipulating, and hanging these forms, I feel the intersections between what was, what is, and what might be. I am reminded of the beauty and fragility of our planet, and how delicate the balance between humans and our environment.
The endless expanse of sky over us all, with its infinite nuances
The compressed millennia layered into rock
The shrinking glaciers, melting drip by drip
The power of the rising sea
The vanishing forests of old growth trees
How precious and precarious it all is.
link to video of Precarious Balance
Artist Bio
Lisa Redburn is a photo-based artist intrigued by the intersections between real, reflected, and remembered. She is currently creating three dimensional objects and reimagined worlds using her photographic prints.
Based in Plymouth, MA, Redburn is a juried member of the Plymouth Center for the Arts and South Shore Art Center. Her work has appeared in numerous national exhibits, including the Monmouth Museum, the Attleboro Arts Museum, the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, and the Griffin Museum of Photography. She has received national recognition, including Best in Show in “From a Seed… A World of Botanicals” at the New York Center for Photographic Arts (NYC4PA). Her images have appeared in Photo Review, LensWork’s “Seeing in Sixes,” YourDailyPhotograph.com and donttakepictures.com.
Redburn studied photography with Alison Shaw on Martha’s Vineyard and with Emily Belz at the Griffin Museum of Photography.