Maysey Craddock Studio

Only three more days to stop by to see my show ‘Golden Hour’. This new body of work explores color and form through images that reference the wetland ecologies of the northern Gulf Coast. I think about Landscape as layers of story: geology, natural cycles, ebb and flow, decay and transformation, and the way it is shaped and altered by human use.

Shown here is “The Last Orchid”, the largest work in the show measuring 48x62 inches. This piece is based on a photograph I took during a boat tour in ‘America’s Amazon’: the Mobile/Tensaw River Delta - a vast estuarine landscape of brackish marsh prairie, cypress-gum swamps and woodland shores. After winding our way through some bayous our guide pulled over to an embankment and led us into the forested edge to look for one of the 54 species of orchids that call this place - one of the world’s most biodiverse ecologies outside of the Amazonian basin - home. Alabama has notoriously lax environmental regulations, and this delta in its richness is endangered by industry, unchecked development, upstream pollution and contamination and likely more. But there are a lot of passionate individuals and organizations working to protect this treasure and raise awareness about what is living, breathing and blooming right under our noses.

“The Last Orchid”; 2023; 48 x 62 inches; , thread and flashe on archivally treated