PAM FOX

Many of the flowers that I photograph I grow myself and gather from my yard in the morning before I begin to work. Time acts quickly on these plants, and I only have a brief period to arrange each image. As I create my tabletop photographs, I want to capture these botanicals in ways that are not merely decorative, but that animate the life force inherent in the flowers and plants.

I photograph using the most fleeting of light sources: sunlight moving through fabric. Lit from behind, these botanical arrangements cast shadows forward. Objects behind the loosely woven fabric distort as shapes break down and foreground, background, and fabric merge. The resulting images are ambiguous, yet un-manipulated photographs.

 I recently become interested in Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging. Ikebana practitioners spend time at eye level with their arrangements and work with a quiet focus to find the ideal placement of each element. If successful, the arrangement can enhance the essence of the materials used and can allude to intangible concepts such as the tension between permanence and ephemerality.

 Discovering how similar the practice of Ikebana was to my own intuitive way of working was gratifying. Making this connection is an expansion upon my study of the mid-century, pacific-northwest artists Mark Tobey and Morris Graves whose artwork is also grounded in both spirituality and the natural world.

Pam Fox is a Professor of Fine Arts at Hampden-Sydney College. She holds her BFA and MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Communications Arts and in Photography. She is the recipient of many awards and honors in the Arts, including two Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship Grants, two Virginia Museum Fellowships, and the Theresa Pollack Prize in Photography. Her work is represented in many corporate and museum collections, including the permanent collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.