Two fine art photographers, Patrick O’Brien and Cyd Peroni, and two poets, Lois Roma-Deeley and Rosemarie Dombrowski, collaborated over a period of 18 months to create Geology of Spirit, an exhibition that looks at how the processes and features of the desert Southwest mirror the human spirit. The artists have rejected the typical landscape motif to use the visual and poetic metaphors of birth/death, wet/dry, shadow/light, and negative/positive space, to speak to two central themes:
- There is rebirth on the other side of decay.
- Something powerful abides within the transience of time.
Going outside a traditional pairing of photographer with poet to create the work, Cyd, Patrick, Lois, and Rosemarie collaborated as one. Initially, poets were asked to respond to a large collection of photographs. Later in the process, the photographers had the opportunity to respond to the poetry.
The process resulted in 14 groupings. Each grouping may be viewed as a singular piece of art that contains one poem and a series of photographs.
