Mid+West | Ellen Jantzen
“Land really is the best art.” — Andy Warhol
Please enjoy this visual essay on adaptation and acceptance in relocation/immigration and migration by New Mexico based artist Ellen Jantzen.
Some say we are all immigrants but many indigenous people have lived in one location for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. In this series I am addressing the more recent acts of relocation.
The place of one's birth greatly influences who they are but through moving, new foods, cultures, languages and landscapes await to reshape their very being. Acceptance and rejection play a part in this.
I was born in the Midwest, moved as a young adult to California, then back to the Midwest to help aging parents. After their passing, I headed west again, this time alighting in New Mexico. Even though I didn't really encounter a great deal of differences in people there were subtle language differences, definitely food differences and some culture shifts that required adjustment on my part.
The most profound change for me was the landscape.
With the series Mid+West, I am blending photos from my years in the Midwest (mainly rural Missouri and Illinois) with current photos I’ve taken while living in New Mexico.
I feel that one's landscape, whether rural, suburban or urban, can utterly reshape them and how through relocation they grow and flourish. They become, in essence, a blending of all former homelands with the present.
My work can be best described as Photo Montage. I create two-dimensional imagery as limited edition prints using my computer and a variety of drawing and photography software. I use, as a starting point, my original digital photographs. I begin by layering and re-coloring; the images are manipulated in many different ways and the process becomes infinite as I further re-color, re-manipulate. A re-creation occurs; time is irrelevant as memory takes hold. My work provides a link between traditional and digital art forms.
To learn more about Ellen and her work, please visit her website or follow her on instagram.
Additional images in the Mid + West Series:
