Born in Chicago, the big city, Ardine Nelson spent her first 16 summers on her grandparents grain farm in the middle of North Dakota. With this upbringing, it is not surprising that she’s drawn to both the natural world and the built landscape. Ardine has taught photography and related computer programs since 1972, and her relationship to the materials of her field has been a life-long learning experience that constantly influences her art. Wabi-sabi… A world view centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. An aesthetic sometimes described as one of beauty that is ”imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. Recognizing this aesthetic has become important to Ardine and will continue to influence her work no matter the subject in front of her lens.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My long-term interest in landscape, urban landscape, land usage, regeneration and man’s effect on the land continues to influence my visual ideas. My most current body of work, Transitory States, references this interest through the making of images documenting the life cycle of plants. Certain flowers last only a day (or night) before beginning to age and die. This process of discovering the visual beauty of the aging plant materials applies to all stages we humans pass through as we age.

Counter to the normal expectation of “beautiful color”, these faded, muted tones instead directs the viewer to consider the life cycle emphasising the notion of all life cycles in our world with the longest, that of our universe and the shortest, the adult female mayfly living for merely five minutes. Everything else cycles somewhere between the two. The flower is ever changing as it fades, dries and may begin to grow mould.