The Tender Path

What We Find When We Slow Down

For years, this Substack has been a journal of the ephemeral, and my photographic work has always sought to capture that same delicate quality. My evolving series, “Where Memory Softly Falls,” is the heart of that quest.

The entire journey—my life, my work, and the final breathtaking drive down the Columbia River Gorge with my sister Toren just after saying goodbye to our sister Cheryl—continues to be a mystic road.

My upcoming exhibition, “Wonder/Tender,” at the Oblivion Gallery here in Eugene, Oregon, is the next step on this path. The “Tender” half of the show explores the raw, unresolved feelings of impending absence and the quiet ache of memory already slipping away. It’s what I feel as her spirit ascends and her body descends—a season of departure and transition.

The medium I use is the perfect collaborator for this theme. Encaustic, the ancient medium of beeswax and damar resin, creates a warm, translucent veil. It is a protective skin, allowing the composite photographs—where autumn leaves, shadows of birds, and half images of a woman walking away (the animals who live in the Great Mystery, as did Cheryl)—to glow through a beautiful, gentle haze.

The process is like holding a memory in the light:

A Glimpse of the Journey

These are some of the images from the “Tender” half of the show that reflect that autumn feeling of contemplation and journey, of grasping at a beautiful memory.

“Her Marigold Heart” is an image of my sister Cheryl buried in marigolds, the radiant and redolent flower of the living and the dead. I made this for the juried show for Dia de los Muertos at Maude Kerns Art Center here in Eugene, Oregon.

“Wild Child” One of the last paintings Cheryl made and we discussed before she crossed over was of a very small boat that she said was her soul, crossing over the wide river of death. I have been haunted by that image, so I made several images of that old river and the vast unknown forest on the other side. I feel the spirit becomes a child again, one with wings eagerly setting off to explore where the rest of us may not go.

“A Small God of the Sea”

Tender Passage

This exhibition will be a conversation between the transient and the eternal, the Tender memory and the flash of Wonder (which we’ll explore in the next post).

If this resonates with your journey, I would be honored if you would join me.

Invitation

The “Wonder/Tender” exhibition, featuring gilded photography and encaustic work, opens December 6th at Oblivion Gallery in Eugene, OR. My Artist Talk at 2:00 pm.

For daily, behind-the-scenes video updates and process notes, please follow my social channels and the hashtag: #WONDERTENDER

P.S. I am delighted to announce I am now represented by Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ. You can view my evolving portfolio here: https://tinyurl.com/JensenAtXanadu