
SFO Museum features new works by Vanessa Marsh
March 2019
SFO Museum
—Vanessa Marsh, 2019
In the series, The Sun Beneath the Sky, artist Vanessa Marsh reflects upon the nature of light, atmosphere, geology, and time. Layers of pastel-toned mountains and valleys rise and fall under sunlit skies. Glowing light rakes through transparent mountain tops — reminiscent of how the landscape appears when seen through mist, smog, or the dense haze of wildfire smoke. The images evoke a sense of the sublime, recalling the beauty of the natural world while meditating on the scale of geological structures within it.
The Sun Beneath the Sky continues Marsh's long-term practice of using cut paper, multiple exposures, and dodging and burning techniques to create cameraless photographic landscapes. Each unique print is made by selectively exposing silver gelatin paper to sunlight and then processing the paper in photo chemicals to affix the image. In this way, the artist uses sunlight as both subject matter and medium.