MEAGAN SHEIN and SIOBHÁN ARNOLD
“ A Murmur in the Trees — to note — Not loud enough — for Wind — A Star — not far enough to seek — Nor near enough — to find —“
-- Emily Dickinson F433 ( 1862 ) J416
We met as art students in Chicago nearly 25 years ago . We have shared both a conceptual and aesthetic sensibility ever since , despite physical distance and working in very different mediums . Meagan has primarily worked with encaustic , drawing , and installation while Siobhán works most often with photography and installation . In 2014 , we spent 10 days together on the Oregon Coast in a self-designed artist residency exploring common ideas and experimenting with both familiar and unfamiliar media . We brought together image fragments , experiments , and works in progress . After much conceptual dialog about what really mattered to us , we distilled our ideas into exploring how landscape resonates with mythology and fairy tale , and the role that these myths and tales play in our lives .
As the landscape became a place to explore inner psychology , one concept in particular became evident to us : the subtle intersection of both looking and seeing . Looking and Seeing are actually two different things . How does one look at something and not see it ? And conversely , how does one see something without looking ? We wanted to pierce the veil of our own blindness and notice our surroundings , conceptually and literally . The work in A Murmur in the Trees begins with observations in nature - photographing trees and landscapes in a number of different locations : Oregon , Michigan , California , New Mexico , Canada . The trees chosen were those particularly enacted upon by another natural or unnatural phenomenon : being choked or strangled by vines , being torn apart , growing inside or around something else . Once we began looking , we found this imagery everywhere . We view the trees and landscapes as stand-ins for human characters ; the subjects of our own mythic narrative . The imagery also references motherhood , it is beautiful and painful , something that grows and destroys you in the process of birthing , aging and death .