October and November ​Creative Spirits Gallery

Three photographers are showing images in the Creative Spirits Art Gallery for October and November under the theme "Thin Places".  We welcome Dayle Askey, Tara Shepersky, and Donna Herzfeldt-Kamprath to the gallery!  Each artist explores in her own way how the holy and sacred is present in the ordinary and tangible world we live in. The artists will be in the gallery on Sunday, Oct. 6, 9:15-10:45 am for a reception. Special guest Doanne Brown will be here playing the harp for the reception. There also is a special interactive part of the exhibit called "Florilegia" - come and experience sparkling words and images!

Donna Herzfeldt-Kamprath

​“Thin Places” invite careful scrutiny.  Surfaces, reflections, horizons, and edges define but also cause the curious viewer (like myself) to spend time in wondering.  What is alien about that flower stamen?  Whose hand could that be?  What repetitive motion is changing that landscape - and how?  Can I perceive it?

My photographic process is influenced by Christine Valters Paintner’s work, Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice.  It cultivates what she calls “sacred seeing or seeing with the ‘eyes of the heart’ (Ephesians 1:8).”  For me this begins when I pick up my camera with the intention of walking and watching open to what might be revealed.  The process continues when I sit down with images on my computer to look deeply and critically, using the tools available to see what evokes wonder, awe, thought, and prayer. 

This exhibit has three primary sets of photos that are “thin” in different ways.  One is a set of photos featuring hands and stories told through those hands resting, working, or offering.  Hands busy and in motion bear the weight of what we hold and what we try to hold together.  Hands settled on an arm or shoulder communicate compassion and care.  Hands hold our offerings of love and beauty.  The sensitivity of our hands and fingers helps us explore the world and our relationships.  Paying attention to hands helps me know a person through a fresh lens.

The second set of photos are those shimmering in shades of red, burgundy, oranges, and gold.  Once I stepped outside of a meeting to take a phone call and when I hung up, the drops on the deep red leaves in the courtyard where I stood caught my eye and my heart.  I had to go grab my camera and just focus in on those leaves and drops.  The moment was “thin” because it would not last and because spending time there superceded what I had actually come to do.  The ability of a photo to suspend time and help me be still makes it thin because I am better able to perceive the Holy present then.

The third set of photos present textures, patterns, colors, lines, and details that we may not stop to notice, but the photo holds those until we have time to examine and reflect.  Holding the gaze of the bark of a tree or rocks that have tumbled onto the beach or the pattern of sand slows my breath, my heartbeat, my racing brain, and my spirit to look at what was so carefully crafted by the Creator.  Wouldn’t you want others to take time with what you create - why wouldn’t God?!  Here I feel I sidle up to Artist God and see the pure joy of creating from God’s perspective. 
​Those are often moments I myself get lost in taking photos of one thing for an extended period of time … the flower, the bug, the wave.  Measured time melts away; the kairos moment is everything.

Tara Shepersky

Tara K. Shepersky is a contemplative walker, writer, & photographer based in Oregon's Willamette Valley. You can find her poems, essays, and photos in Camas Magazine, Cascadia Rising Review, Leaping Clear, Whitefish Review, and EcoTheo, among others. 

pdxpersky.com // Twitter @PDXpersky // Instagram @tkspdx 
She's also the creator of The Florilegia Project. Find it at: pdxpersky.com // Twitter @SparklingPhrase // Instagram @TheFlorilegiaProject 
Tara K. Shepersky Thin Places, October/November 2019 Creative Spirits Gallery 

I remark sometimes that "the veil feels thin today." I'm using the adapted modern language of Celtic spirituality, thinking about "the veil between worlds"--this world and the Otherworld, where- and what-ever that might be. So what I mean is something like "I feel haunted today." 

Not in a bad way, although that word, haunted, carries that negative, that ghostly connotation. But when I feel haunted it's often by a sort of echo: a closeness between my own moment and some concurrent Other experience, which I can't identify. God, maybe--though I've learned not to push too hard. If the echo has something to point me toward, it will do that--if I look, and listen. 

Once when I said this, a friend replied, "the veil always feels thin to me." And that response got me thinking: aren't there moments in the everyday--the non-haunted days--when you feel like a light's shining through, or a well has been tapped, or a connection's been made that's so profound it takes your breath for a second, even if you don't know how to name the feeling? Aren't there places you visit, or people, that look into you profoundly and shift something inside? I knew I'd met plenty of these "thin moments." And then I realized that they are what I photograph. 

On a basic level, I photograph mostly landscape, "nature." But what I'm looking for is liminality: that porous borderland between light and dark, life and death, being and becoming. Or between the built and the natural, the symbolic and the only-itself. Between, sometimes, longing and belonging. Between the Divine, and our apprehension of Divinity. 

My poetry too, comes from thin places I encounter. And, I would venture, from a thin place inside. Maybe that place is what we call the soul. I've come to understand that what I'm doing, by attending to this particular perception, is a type of praying. 

I chose the poems for this exhibition with the idea that they might offer another access to some of the ways thin places might look or feel. The poems don't "go" with the photos in any linear sense. They are only attempts to illuminate the same kinds of encounters. 
Art is itself a thin place. I invite you to linger among these pieces--look, and listen. Try reading the poems out loud; it will change the way you feel them. 
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And if something resonates, wait with it. You have shaped, with that resonance, a thin place. Which I believe may be simply a way to say this: holy ground. 

Dayle Askey

​I am an image seeker.  My first camera was a Polaroid Swinger (black and white).  I loved the instant gratification in seeing images miraculously pop out of the camera.  With the advent of mobile phone that now include a decent camera, I get that same miraculous instant image gratification.  The photos I’m displaying were all created with an IPhone.  I find that manipulating images in various editing applications creates something new and unexpected from a simple image. There are so many possibilities contained within the image it’s a satisfying challenge to find the right “mix” of original and manipulated photographic images.

Images in Thin Places:  Thin places are connections that take us beyond our knowing and understanding.  These places and experiences open us up to the unexpected.  Through prayer and meditation, music and art, I find these thresholds and “fresh-holds” of that which is beyond my understanding.  Thin Places are Holy Places.  Every moment in our lives contain these Holy, Thin Places. Looking at something ordinary with new, fresh eyes, invites us into this space.

These images presented are my attempt to convey ordinary, holy moments with fresh eyes.  In a recent visit to Europe my neck stretch up and out to see the tops of steeples and church windows.  On a day when the sun came out after the rain there were puddle reflections all around me.  I started looking at the ground and I was fascinated with the “puddle pics”.   The images, broken and wavy, conveyed a new expression of the steeple or stained glass window. They are upside down and backwards, disorienting… a thin place.  I also connect with images of doors and landscapes, flowers and found objects… the thin places are everywhere and I see those thin places in the ordinary, everyday-ness of life.