3636 Chestnut Place, Denver 80216
Saturday, October 15 Opening Reception and Panel Discussion
While at Fotofest in Houston this spring, we ran into fellow photographer, Samantha Johnston, who was there reviewing in her capacity as Director of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver’s RiNo Arts District. She invited us to show Processed Views in November. With a generous grant from the Mary L. Nohl Suitcase Export Fund, we were able to include our most recent work, Enhanced Varieties and Sugar Geology, as well as attend the opening.
We planned a full schedule to take advantage of sharing our work with a new audience:
Thursday Dined with former CPAC director, Nigel and Christina at the home of local painter and educator, Lanny DeVuono
Friday a.m. We presented our work to 2 local high school art classes, discussing artwork, art-making and ideas. Students were guided through a “flavor excursion” comparing natural and manufactured flavors.
p.m. CPAC trustees and friends reception on Friday 10/13 for in-depth and informal discussion of the work.
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| Latest specimens from our project "Sugar Geology" |
p.m. In conjunction with the CPAC opening reception, a panel with the artists and four members of the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council discussed issues that the artists’ work evoked. Speakers included Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Fellow, Eric Kornacki representing Re:Vision; Mya Bea, Director of Liberation Sequence Gardens; Asia Dorsey from Five Points Fermentation Co.; and Shannon Spurlock, Denver Urban Gardens. The conversation was part of CPAC’s ongoing Developing Dialogues series.
Our work was covered in two articles in Westword the local newspaper with more than 1.6 million monthly active viewers
10/14/16 Processed Views Meshing Junk Food and American Landscape
10/15/16 Artists Make Donald Trump from Junk Food
and in High Country News
10/31/16 Famous Western Landscapes, recreated with processed food
Sunday Denver Botanical Gardens - Denver Art Museum exhibitions viewed - On Desert Time: Timothy O’Sullivan & William Bell, The Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance, Shock Wave: Japanese Fashion Design l980s- 90s and collection highlights with a finale at Acorn Restaurant
Monday Excursion South to Garden of the Gods, Denver Botanical Museum, Manitou Springs Cliff Dwelling. Hilarious dinner with three photography colleagues from Colorado College and UC-CS in Colorado Springs: Heather Oelklaus, Carol Dass and Emma Powell
Tuesday A quick swing to the Trump Rally in Colorado Springs before we left golden Colorado
As seen in The New Yorker, BBC, CNN, and at the FotoFest 2016 Biennial, Processed Views presents iconic American landscapes recreated with manufactured food. Created by longtime collaborators Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman, the project explores the frontier of industrial food production: the seductive and alarming intersection of nature and technology. (Pictured above: Fruit Loops Landscape, courtesy of the artists.)
Both artists will be present to discuss their work at an opening reception on Saturday, October 15 from 6-9 pm at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center. Guests from the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council will also join the conversation as part of CPAC’s ongoing Developing Dialogues series. FREE.
In the Artists’ Words “As Midwesterners, we saw the landscape transformed as the family farm gave way to agricultural industry. This was not exclusive to the heartland, as Big Ag and food processing facilities eventually spread across the country. In earlier work, we photographed the American West, observing how human interventions altered the land in accord with ideas of progress and new trends in consumption. In Processed Views: Surveying the Industrial Landscape, we revisit the landscape, this time at the seductive and alarming intersection of nature and food technology.
We came to Processed Views from a previous project about the nurturing aspect of food. In those photographs, we traced the emotional and physical energy that flows through the intimate act of preparing and sharing food. The flip side of mealtime in America, however, is the complex, impersonal system of industrial agriculture, food processing, and marketing. As our country moves further away from traditional sources of food, we enter uncharted territory with its myriad unintended consequences for the environment and for our health.
Throughout our collaboration, we have turned to history as a source of inspiration. We reference here the work of Carleton Watkins (1829-1916), whose iconic photographs honored nature and documented development on the frontier. His images were made at a critical time in the ongoing oppositional relationship between American industrial development and conservation. We are at another such historical moment today.
Processed Views presents a provocative encounter with the average American diet. We ask ourselves and our viewers to reevaluate this supposed utopia. Have we oversold our technological ability to bend the forces of nature, whether to fulfill fantasies of a fun food diet or to meet heroic expectations of feeding the world? We hope this work serves as a cautionary tale, where we can extract lessons from the past and pause to consider the consequences of our choices.”
Barbara Ciurej is a Chicago-based photographer and graphic designer. She has a Bachelor of Science in Visual Communications from the Institute of Design+Illinois Institute of Technology. Ever looking to the art historical past to invoke order and harmony, her search for narratives to explain the plight of how we got here has fueled 30+ years of making pictures.
Lindsay Lochman is a Milwaukee-based photographer and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin / Milwaukee. She received her Master of Science in Visual Communications at the Institute of Design + Illinois Institute of Technology. In her quest to organize the natural world, she is inspired by the intersection of science, history, and the unconscious.
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