
EARTHBORN: 30 SECONDS TO 40 MOONS
A Traveling Exhibition by Artists
Linda Alterwitz and Elizabeth Stone
A Traveling Exhibition by Artists
Linda Alterwitz and Elizabeth Stone
Listen to a virtual artist talk with the Missoula Art Museum Senior Curator, Brandon Reintjes
Artists Linda Alterwitz and Elizabeth Stone use photography to poetically portray physiological processes. Each artist uses photography to capture states that are fleeting, transitory, and ephemeral—in one case the simple act of breathing, and in the other, tracking the complicated progression of a neurodegenerative disorder, Parkinson’s disease. Poetry is as an expressive mode characterized by ‘intensity’ and ‘emotional content.’ Using the term ‘poetry’ as a verb or an adverb to describe visual art is a way to say that what is happening is beautiful, hard to place, and deeply felt—exactly the response viewers have to Alterwitz and Stone’s work. We see, but don’t know what we’re looking at. We feel deeply and intensely, but aren’t always sure why we are feeling.
It’s striking that a poetic approach is the best vehicle to combine together the simple, yet mysterious processes of breathing and dying, both of which are described more broadly as a mechanical. By mechanical, the medical community doesn’t mean that there isn’t feeling or thought related to breathing or dying, rather they are automatic processes. They happen independently of our choices as human beings. What remains unsaid, perhaps because it is so obvious, is that both are intricately connected to life and living. When events happen outside of our control, the only factor we can control is how we respond. Here, Alterwitz and Stone, prescient and invested in their work, provide the viewer with their collective wonder and reflection. Though they work independently, both artists share an interest in wellness. They explore human awareness of the body, cycles, loss, and connection and suggest that what is deeply personal and fleeting may be universal and timeless.
"Cathe" from the series JUST BREATHE "January 2013"" from the series 40 MOONS
By Linda Alterwitz By Elizabeth Stone
The exhibition "EARTHBORN: 30 SECONDS TO 40 MOONS" offers viewers two separate bodies of work from two visual artists that investigate experiences that bind us to one another. Each artist, integrating science and art, explores how to make visible the elusive cycles of human existence by transforming the intensely personal in to the universal.
"Artists Linda Alterwitz and Elizabeth Stone shared motivation
is to demonstrate our intrinsic connectivity into a vessel,
capable of transporting us beyond time and place."
J. Sybylla Smith, Independent Curator/Author
2020_Earthborn (pdf)
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