Just Visiting: Buffalo

Open Mind Art Space is pleased to announce an exclusive online solo exhibition, Just Visiting: Buffalo, featuring new photography by returning artist Caitlin Deibel. The exhibition will launch online on Artsy on Saturday, December 1st at 12:00 PM. The exhibition will be on view online only from December 1st through December 22nd, 2018, at the following URL: https://www.artsy.net/show/open-mind-art-space-just- visiting-buffalo

Just Visiting: Buffalo is part of an ongoing series that observes the uniqueness of natural elements in a particular region. Caitlin Deibel’s first exhibition at Open Mind Art Space was a joint show with artist Ariana Sturr, titled Just Visiting: LA, where both artists studied how Los Angeles intertwines with its natural elements. The exhibition documented the artists’ observations of the city’s unique relationship with its non-indigenous iconic plant life through multimedia works using found flora, photography, and light installations. Included in the show was 50 photographs of Deibel’s May Flowers collection, which consisted of plant life foraged around the Los Angeles area.

Deibel has since relocated from Los Angeles to her hometown of Buffalo, NY. In her upcoming online exhibition, Just Visiting: Buffalo, she continues her May Flowers collection with new photographs of plant life she discovers while exploring her natural surroundings in and around Buffalo. The photographs in May Flowers are created from a meditative process that involves an overhead projector, foraged plant life, and a camera. Deibel places fallen fragments of the local, natural landscape onto the glass bed of the projector. After sculpting the natural object and choosing a degree of manual focus on the projector, a shadow or silhouette of the natural element is projected onto the wall and Deibel photographs the resulting projection.

The images share an appearance of natural and neutral tones. The ambiguous focus of each image represents an accepted balance of clarity and mystery, and connects the proverbial portraits in a universal uncertainty about life and death. Deibel’s thoughtful process, from selectively foraging individual plant pieces, paying close attention to their uniqueness, and finally photographing the result, honors the cycle of death and rebirth.

Caitlin Deibel (b. 1987) is from in a small town outside of Buffalo, NY and lived in Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA during her career in the fashion and art industries. Deibel earned her BFA from Syracuse University in Fashion Design in 2009 and currently works and lives in Buffalo, NY. Her artwork is intended to promote and bring awareness to mental health by paralleling creative processes to behaviors in nature. Each project is designed to empower others to practice for healing and inspiration.