This exhibit was a lot of work but also a lot of fun to put together. The original idea was all abstracts but going through photos without getting locked into is-it-or-isn’t-it abstract loosened it up and made a better exhibit. Removing context alone can make a photo abstract.
There are a couple of jokes in this exhibit that are not apparent.
The subjects of the “Rusted Tubes” photo are huge industrial steel tubes, three feet in diameter, stacked on top of each other. The photo next to it, “Archaea (Microorganism),” of similar color, is comprised of millions of microorganisms that can be seen only through a microscope. Only when there are so many of them can they be seen by the naked eye. Each of the formations with white spikes is less than an inch tall. The spikes are salt (yes, I tasted them), a result of the organism maintaining interior salt level by pushing extra to the exterior where it builds up as spikes. I got a kick out of contrasting two subjects of similar color, the rounded tubes and the rounded but spiky Archaea, but different in almost every other way.
Anybody who knows me knows about me and cats so I was pleased to be able to fit one of my feline friends into this exhibit. I nearly titled it “White Cat on a White Background,” which is how the photo started out but decided it would be too confusing. A pure white cat on a white blanket with a dark shadow at the bottom gave me the idea to use just the white outline of the cat and fill the rest with black, more manipulation that I usually do and more than I usually like. I like the way it turned out. –Sally Mack, April 26, 2026