Made during my residency at Hermitage Artist Retreat in Sarasota, this body of work is a meditation on Manasota Key, where a barrier island is embraced by sweeping views of the Gulf of Mexico. Prehistoric dunes and sea grasses waltz in the breeze as surf collapses onto shore. Shells gather like tide-written notes, and fossilized shark teeth are sometimes washed ashore.
Across the bridge, protected landscapes hold a different kind of quiet, brackish water moving through mangrove fringes, trails threading scrubby flatwoods, swamps, and wetlands. Here, birds pause as sentinels and the waterline becomes a living boundary, constantly remade.
Working in black-and-white, I photographed as an attention practice: slowly, patiently, drawn to the tension between stillness and motion, sanctuary and change. Manasota Key carries the feeling of Florida of long ago, yet it is alive in the present: a place where nature persists, moment by moment, through tide, light, and time.
