Underneath you right now is an immense amount of earth, 1,802 miles to the core. We often forget how much Earth we have paved over or leveled to create and foster our bustling lives. The recent Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art exhibit, “12 Hz” by Ron Jude, amplifies the faces of rock, stone, granite and all of Earth’s familiar hard foundation in all its glory. The large 56 x 42 inches black and white photographs are paired with an audio installation by Joshua Bonnetta that includes field recordings and seismic readings of our Earth’s subtle movements. Coming from speakers in the corners of the white walled exhibit, the low humming and groaning of the earth washes over the atmosphere. Its deepness of sound parallels the rocks that are exposed by the shifting of the earth in the photos.
The exhibit was put on as a part of the Barry Lopez Foundation for Art and Environment, which is an environmental advocacy group that puts on arts exhibits to spread awareness of climate change. Jude, with Toby Jurovics, the director of the Barry Lopez Foundation, organized the traveling exhibit and narrowed it down to 20 photos out of more than 40. These captured moments are from Oregon, California, Hawaii and Iceland.
“In the beginning, I didn’t really know what the work was. I was just sort of making it to see if I could get some traction with it,” Jude said. “But it was pretty early on that I knew something was happening.”
Capturing the focused landscapes of Oregon started off as just exploring the new state for Jude as he grew up in Idaho. “It’s a process of discovery really. I go to a location, and I just tune into it and try to figure out what could sort of work in service to the bigger ideas that I have about the work,” Jude said. Bigger ideas of environmental awareness through these photos quickly became the theme for the work.
Two of the most stunning works in the exhibit is “Glacial Ice with Foliation #2” and “Glacial Ice with Foliation #3” which are only two parts of a much larger image. Just the two on their own show a magnificent scale for the icy subject. The beautiful natural structure of ice shows us the strength of the glacier that has cut and exposed earth’s landscapes through the ages with its slow movements. It also captures the sadness as you see the melting curves on the surface impacted by the slow heating of the earth due to our excess consumption.
Jude captures the layers of rock to make them look like silky flowing waves, showcasing beauty that is often overlooked. He also captures the waves of the ocean in “Marine Layer,” making the treacherous water frozen like the earth it carves.
“One of the main things that stands out to me is all the texture in the pictures and the way they are exposed,” freshman Kyla Schmitt, a viewer of the exhibit, said. “I really like the ones with the seas where there’s a layer of mist over everything, it’s very ominous.”
Every image encapsulates what the Barry Lopez Foundation wants to communicate with the viewer. “How do we engage in a conversation about our relationship to the landscape of the natural world, and it’s a very different thing in the 21st century than it was in the 20th. I think that a lot of our sort of expectations and hopes for the world are changing,” Jurovics said. Unearthing the exposed landscapes of rock brings our minds to parts of the earth we don’t appreciate often enough.
To enjoy these pieces, visit the JSMA where you can view the photos in all their gargantuan glory in the Schnitzer Gallery on the second floor. The exhibit will be there until March 13.
