Fleur du Mauvais or Covid Flowers

With a 2020 Title III mini-grant I took an online camera-less photography course and began making lumens, solar photograms. By placing flowers on silver gelatin paper, colored images appear like x-rays. Most artists create beautiful, arching specimens, harkening back to Anna Atkins. Mine are ugly Abstract Expressionist affairs and rather shocking to me. Is this ugliness my personal mirror? Is this ugliness Covid-19, human behavior, or my feelings toward the last two exhausting years?

Les Fleur du Mauvais (The Bad Flowers) or Covid Flowers combines two Covid-19 summers of lumens with failed toned silver gelatin prints. Mauvais, in French, means bad, my first thought of my initial images. I am being honest here, but there is freedom in honesty. The work is a deliberate reference to Baudelaire’s, The Flowers of Evil, charting a similar disgust for the selfishness and lack of action in our society about many issues, including police brutality against black and indigenous people, the almost Vietnam War-like continuous reporting of deaths from Covid-19, and an investigative look at oneself in the current world environment. As someone who has always made and honored beauty in connection to women and nature, this work is a transitional.

This work is currently be scanned and will be available as prints. I will add an image here soon.

Earth Whispering

Earth Whispering is an in process collaboration between Victoria Zolnoski, Darryl Rogers, http://darrylrogers.com and Diana Gonsalves Hansen, https://mountainhollowmedicinals.com. Connecting through Instagram Rogers has been editing Zolnoski’s footage of Medicine Woman Hansen interacting with the Vermont landscape throughout the seasons. While the term “whisperer” has come to mean someone who has perfected a magical skill the use of the verb is deliberate. It is not the label or end product, but the actual entering and participating with nature that is important to these three. Please see the Collaboration section for the videos.

Zolnoski Artist statement:

The quest for beauty has haunted me since I was a little girl. For me it has always been found in nature, which is the source and foundation of oneness on Earth. Beauty is the interconnectedness of all creation; it cannot be defined by value, worth, even goodness or veritas. Those are human labels that remove us, smack of judgment, and perhaps thoughts of superiority. We allow the rest of nature to retain oneness, but separate ourselves from the equation. This is a human problem. When we sense beauty we recognize our real relationship to the rest of the world, that we are not removed, isolated or alone (only by our minds and making). Beauty is the recognition of our unity with the greater universe; it opens all senses, creates belonging and purpose: to care for each other, the earth and all of her inhabitants. 

 I believe in a new Environmental Romanticism, artists capturing the earthly sublime to the full pendulum swing of environmental horror we are currently witnessing on earth. The past misconception that Romanticism is naïve can be proactively replaced with art and education that supports species survival/restoration and human rights. 

 "What will chiefly be remembered about the scientific revolution will be the way in which it scoured the appearances clean of the last traces of spirit, freeing us from original, and for final, participation .... The other name for original participation, in all its long-hidden, in all its diluted forms, in science, in art and in religion, is, after all — paganism." (Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances)

The Photography Gala Awards

Since 2009, TGA has provided juried competitions for professionals and amateur photographers from around the world to compete in five awards and selected thematic contests offering artists opportunities for awards and competitions. The four Awards are the Pollux Award, The Jacob Riis Editorial and Documentary Award; The Julia Margaret Cameron Award for women photographers, the Charles Dodgson Black & White Award, and the Robert Cornelius Portraits Award. The Gala Awards also organize thematic competitions, such as The Urban & Rural Landscape Competition, and the Street Photography Competition.

TGA hosts the above mentioned Awards to honor talented photographers and as a means of establishing and maintaining a continuing effort to help them further their careers, promoting appraisal towards contemporary photography. TGA recognize artists’ talent through competitions juried by industry leaders, exposing their work in the media, publishing their work, hosting collective exhibitions, and by exhibiting their work on line and in the Biennial of Fine Art and Documentary Photography. 

https://www.thegalaawards.com/about

13th Julia Margaret Cameron Award’s results

Non Professional Section

CATEGORIES LANDSCAPE THROUGH WOMEN SEEN BY WOMEN:

Women seen by Women Category Honorable Mention, Victoria Zolnoski

CATEGORIES ABSTRACT THROUGH FINE ART

Cell Phone Category Honorable Mention, Victoria Zolnoski

https://www.thegalaawards.com/results-13th-jmca-non-pro-2

Past Exhibition at Goddard College

Beauty is Interconnectedness. Victoria Patrick Zolnoski
Goddard College, Pratt Library Conference Room, 
July 24 - November 20, 2015
Closing reception: November 20, 3-5 pm

The quest for beauty has haunted me since I was a little girl. For me it has always been found in nature, which is its source and the foundation of oneness on Earth. Beauty is the interconnectedness of all creation; it cannot be defined by value, worth, even goodness or veritas. Those are human labels that remove us, smack of judgment, and perhaps thoughts of superiority. We allow the rest of nature to retain oneness, but separate ourselves from the equation. This is our problem. When we sense beauty we recognize our real relationship to the rest of the world, that we are not removed, isolated or alone (only by our minds and making). Beauty is the recognition of our unity with the greater universe; it opens all senses, creates belonging and purpose: to care for each other, the earth and all of her inhabitants. 

This photography-based exhibition includes classic silver gelatin prints combined with photograms, chromoskedasic photographs and digital prints on fabric. Chromoskedasic is Greek for “color by light scattering” and in this unusual process the regularly exposed black and white image is painted with chemistry in sunlight. The light creates variety in the shapes of the silver particles, therefore making different colors, often metallic in appearance. There is little control over this process and each image is unique. Two triptychs repeat the same image similar to the work of Andy Warhol, but with environmental not Pop sensibilities. 

As a Second Wave Feminist and Eco-feminist Zolnoski presents the unity of woman with nature. “My topic has been the same since the 80’s and feminism is not a dirty word. I have never gotten bored portraying women in nature. It is a sacred event and I approach the model and environment in a worshipful way. The photographs are portraits are of a place as well as an individual who is also often an archetype. Portraiture is always collaboration. Vermont is my home because of its natural beauty.”

Hand felted headdresses with ancient and tribal overtones are combined in a display case with objects found in nature. The artist makes or finds all of her props; some are gifted to her. “The photo shoot becomes the ritual that activates the magic of my art. I photograph women because I am one; they represent my common language, but so do trees and animals, both alive and dead. I witness, participate and capture beauty to show reverence for and my oneness with the earth. We do not own nature; we are a part of it.” Other imagery can be seen at: victoriazolnoski.com or beautyshaman.com.