BEHIND THE MOON

Centered around our relationship to the present day environment, the works here include in-camera manipulations of the ocean, the rising moon, rivers, and other archetypal landscapes.  In contrast to previous bodies of work that were documentary of a specific place or moment, this series is far more interpretative.  Contemplations of time are present throughout all of the works.  Moments of ephemerality in the natural world are seen through cyanotype photograms of spiderwebs and exploding snowballs.  Time’s steadfast and quiet presence is evident in photographs of the passing moon and changing tides.  Through multiple exposures, sometimes as many as 50 exposures onto one sheet of film, the photographs are attempts to seize time and to understand the thin slice of air and earth that sustains us and that we precariously inhabit.

June 22, 1633
2021
Cyanotype with pinholes, lightbox
120” x 30” x 40”

Also included in this new work is the artist’s rendering of the sky as it appeared on the day of Galileo’s recantation before the Inquisition in 1633.  Made as a meditation on truth, thousands of holes were pricked into a 10’ long cyanotype.  Each hole represents a star in the sky, creating a sense of witness to a moment when history turned away from truth in service of dogma. In other works, the transience of a spiderweb merges with fossil dust and glass in an attempt to permanentize the temporary.  Drawing on a diverse range of influences from history, physics, and astronomy, Allison creates an expanded sense of time and contemplation of humankind’s existence as but a point on the galactic time scale.

Winter Ephemerals
2019- 2023
Cyanotypes of snowballs

Multiple Moons II 2021
Archival pigment print
31”x 40”

Multiple Moons I 2021
Archival pigment print
40” x 31

Time Record 2021
Archival pigment print
36”x 46”

I, You 2020
Archival pigment print
30”x 40”

Sunrise & Sunset 2021
Archival pigment print
30”x 40”

A Slow Turning 2021
Archival pigment print
30”x 40”

Behind the Moon
Zeitgeist Gallery | November 6 - 28, 2021

Galactic Knowing 2021
Cyanotypes of Spiderwebs
29 1/2” x 22 5/8”

Browns Creek 2021
Archival pigment print mounted on dibond
60” x 72”