Beth Moon | Selected Works

Today’s augury is a new mode of awareness, recognizing a need to re-connect our relationship with animals built around honor, crucial to ongoing life, human health and cultural ritual.

Special Free Artist's Reception Friday October 7, 2011

Beth Moon, Curator's Choice award winner in the 2010 Canton Luminaries Photography Competition, came upon photography out of necessity, while running a fashion label in Chicago. Frustrated with the work of the photographers she hired to shoot her line, Moon took it upon herself and reconnected with her passion for fine art. Years later, after selling the company, moving abroad, and starting a family, Beth pursued photography with fervor. Moon finds inspiration in unlikely places. Her son introduced her to carnivorous plants which became the subject of one of her seminal bodies of work 'The Savage Garden'. This collection features figures with which most of us are familiar, however, they are presented in an entirely novel way. Their sensual lines, delicate textures, and rich tones are accentuated by isolating individual specimens, and examining them in their own space.

This stylistic approach is also evidenced in a recent body of work titled 'Augurs and Soothsayers' a mythical, artistic, and reverent exploration into the overlooked beauty of the humble chicken. Beth allows us to appreciate the fowl in their own context and on their scale. These are two entirely new portfolios Beth would produce in 2010.

Earlier in 2010, Beth traveled to the remote land of Socotra, off the coast of Yemen, to create 'Island of the Dragon's Blood'. So clandestine is Socotra, that for many years it was accessible only by cargo vessel when the African winds allowed. Beth believes 'it is through the unique vegetation that the spirit of Socotra is defined, and the island’s culture so closely linked to nature, which sets this island apart from the rest of the world.' With over 700 endemic species, Socotra is a truly wild and enchanting landscape.

Also featured in this exhibit, are works from 'The Kingdom Come', an earlier collection displaying Beth's transcendent Gothic style, which is richly executed in her chosen medium of hand-coated platinum prints.