Two Artists Capture The Matter Of Moments

The sky is full of planes. Not like it is at an airport, or ever an air show. No, in Keith Johnson’s Flying Untied, the atmosphere is littered with planes, as if they’ve been shaken all at once out of a gigantic cosmic bag, or as if a dozen air traffic controllers messed up at once and we’re in for the biggest cumulative air disaster the world has ever seen. Flying Untied succeeds in being both somewhat comical and a little threatening in this regard, an effect amplified by the fact that — apart from their proximity to one another — the planes seem totally natural. 

This suggests another way of looking at the photographs — that the planes are those that crossed the field of vision at different times, over a period of hours, even days. In that sense, Johnson’s piece could have been a record, making us understand an ordinary pattern (in this case, air traffic) in an extraordinary way.

The piece is part of ​“Mind Fibers & Typologies: Memory and Ingemination,” an exhibition celebrating the work of ​“two beloved, award-winning members” of Kehler Liddell, artists Edith Borax-Morrison, who died in 2020, and Keith Johnson, who died in 2021. The show runs through May 21 at Kehler Liddell Gallery in Westville.

“Both artists’ work exhibits an extraordinary meditative quality, the product of careful observation and rigorous attention to process and presentation,” an accompanying note explains. ​“Edith’s intricate meditative drawings, created at all hours of the day and night, immerse the viewer in her trance-like creative state. Keith’s typological photography amplifies the range and complexity of repetitive images and adds his unique voice to this photographic lexicon.” The show seeks to bring out ​“their many years’ conversation as well as their love for cultural community programming.”

To that end, sales from the show, which are being done by silent auction, will go to supporting the ArtEcon Initiative, which puts on community arts programming in Westville and West Rock, and the Molham Team, described as ​“a nonprofit humanitarian aid organization that is directing resources to areas devastated by the ongoing Syrian civil war and recent earthquakes. This organization is run on the ground in Syria; the home region of the owners of RAWA restaurant in Westville.” 

Even as Johnson works primarily in photography and Borax-Morrison in drawing, the similarities between them are clear. Both draw their inspiration from the patterns they see around them, or perhaps even see through a microscope. Much of Johnson’s work focuses on patterns of wind and waves, or branches in a forest, or patterns of light. Borax-Morrison’s drawings could be of plant fibers, or a peek into the insides of plant and animal cells. Both artists revel in the details of the surfaces they find. 

We are often told not to lose the forest for the trees, or to understand a whole as something greater than the sum of its parts. In some ways Borax-Morrison’s and Johnson’s pieces both turn that on its head. We are asked to appreciate the minute details of things, at the expense sometimes of fitting the entirety of the subject in the frame — perhaps because understanding the details is the way to understanding the whole, or perhaps because the whole is, in the end, unknowable, and maybe just knowing part of it well is good enough, or as good as it’s going to get.

Borax-Morrison’s and Johnson’s piece also share a keen sense of movement. The planes, waves, and fish in Johnson’s photographs are in motion. Even the branches he photographs in the woods might not be in the same configuration when he returns. Likewise, Borax-Morrison’s drawings convey enough energy that it’s possible to imagine them flitting away from the view we’ve been given, like amoebas on a slide. 

There’s a suggestion there about capturing the details of and appreciating the fleeting moment, of knowing it and then letting it go. It takes on additional poignancy in this rare posthumous show for Kehler Liddell. The artists may be gone, but their artwork remains — and their ideas flow on.

“Mind Fibers & Typologies: Memory and Ingemination” runs at Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Ave., through May 21. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.