Grass is the first land growth and is a miracle of tenacity and beauty.
Sand is the song of my childhood
Sand Grass, Nelson’s Bay, NSW, 2007
SAND GRASS, a limited edition of fine prints. It is the fruit of my search for the most beautiful paper in the world, such that I might put these five gentle stories of the grass which grows in the sand into a duo where the paper and the image would sing a haiku poem.
These works were exhibited at the Monash Gallery of Art from 4th October-3rd November, 2013 as part of my Edge of the Road exhibition. Shaune Lakin, then director of MGA, writes:
“Evans’s Sand grass pictures reveal her sense of the language of landscape emerging through an intimate encounter with it. While the subject matter described in the title is clearly recognisable in the images, the Zen-like compositions push the photographs beyond any simple documentary function.
The prints are made using a mulberry based washi stock, hand-crafted using traditional techniques in the Awagami Paper Factory in Tokushima, Japan.
During the late 1960s Evans studied painting under the abstract artist John Olsen, who championed the idea of semi-abstract compositions in which the landscape ‘writes itself’. Olsen’s teachings are clearly evident in the way Evans has flattened the picture plane and made lyrical use of sinuous natural forms.
The patterns made by the sea grass represent an organic language, a subject suitably reflected by the soft patina of the handmade Japanese paper on which Evans and Brian Gilkes printed these pictures.”
Adapted from text written by Shaune Lakin, director of Monash Gallery of Art, 2013.
Joyce Evans Photographer 