sleep walk by Marlene MacCallum

In early June of 2020, to mark the end of my regular walks, I began to photograph at the edge of Lake Ontario, always from the same south-facing vantage point. Over the following months and years, I slowly amassed a visual record that reflects the ever-changing conjunction of sky, water, and land. My conception of this vast lake as a fixed entity was transformed into a realization of the mutability, vulnerability, and adaptability of this environment. The process of making “sleep walk” was a discovery of the phenomena of shifting states: natural, physical, social and psychological. This resulted in a seven-section work that uses a combination of accordion and nested folio sections.

Section One: fluctuate
The unfolding natural pattern of seasonal flux.
Two forms of time are present, the diachronic time of movement through the book and the synchronic time of each page.

Section Two: sublimate
Each section begins with a word that encapsulates a form of shift.
Sublimation, the phenomenal occurrence as snow bypasses its watery self to become sky, this shocking shift of states where water feels wedged between solid and gas and the ever-present horizon.
The artist is out of view, but present in framing and offering the work to share the wonder of a world that is ever affected by our presence.

Section Three: invert
Negative to positive, a world of photographic inversions where the shift-maker is the artist choosing to flip black and white and colour when given the surprising gift that a lake’s edge can be its own mirror image. The eerie process of translation when a negative turns snow into stone.

Section Four: lit becomes split
The rip tide that spills past into future.

Section Five: saturate
The cycle of drain and rain unbalanced by temperature shifts.
rain drops rise and soak the sky

Section Six: cloud
The visual veil.
over lap over lay over cast turn down cast shadow

Section Seven: sleep walk
The algae clogging the water and zebra mussels clogging the shore.
Are we oblivious or observant of the evidence at the event horizon?
close one eye half asleep in July
sleep walk swim in December’s frigid open water fall asleep in full summer awake to fall asleep to fall asleep to fall awake.