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Nolan Preece Chemigrams Woodland, 2014, 20 x 16 inches, Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Moonrise Over Chemigram 2015 20 x16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Summit 2016 44 x 55 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 5 In the Grove 2014 20 x16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Valley 2016 31 x 32 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 5 Subterranean Flora 2014 20 x16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 At Forest’s Edge 2016 16 x 20 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Winter 2015 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Forest 2016 16 x 24 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Sierra 2016 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Canyon 2016 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Afternoon 2016 16 x 24 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 High Tide 2016 16 x 20 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 The Clearing 2015 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Earth and Sky #2 2016 16 x 20 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Big Oil Finds Its Place In Time 2013 40 x 32 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 5 Climate Change House of Cards 2013 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print , edition 10 Big Oil Meets With The Big Fracking Deal 2013 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Tipping Point 2014 16 x 20 inches Silver gelatin print The Sun, the Fern and the Jabberwock 2012 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Climate Change Hummingbird Trap 2013 16 x 20 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 The Quadrats and the Pump Jacks 2013 40 x 27 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 5 Ice Age 2014 43 x 53.5 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 5 Ouranos & Kronos (NgCv #035) 2009 55 x 43 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 5 The Memoirs of Sisyphus (NgCv #036) 2010 16 x 24 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Chemisynthesis (NgCv #037) 1979 reprinted 2014 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Swarm (NgCv #040) 1979, reprint 2014 16 x 18 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Alien (NgCv #010) 2001 21 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Ascension (NgCv #003) 1989 reprint 2014 9.5 x 7 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Rolling (NgCv #026) 2001 43 x 55.5 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 5 Landscape (NgCv #023) 2001 16 x 20 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Dancer (NgCv #029) 2001 20 x 16 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Flipped (NgCv #015) 2001 16 x 20 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Family (NgCv #004) 1989 reprint 2014 8 x 7 inches Digital archival pigment print, edition 10 Legs (NgCv #000) 1979 9.5 x 7 inches Silver gelatin print Growth (NgCv #001) 1979 6.5 x 8.5 inches Silver Gelatin print Indicator Species 1994 19.5 x 15.5 inches Silver Gelatin Print Portal 1982 6.5 x 8 inches Silver Gelatin Print Chemogram in Au 1981 8 x 10 inches Silver Gelatin Print Tracks 1987 10 x 8 inches Silver Gelatin Print Au Chemogram 1981 10 x 8 inches Silver Gelatin Print Contact Zone 1987 9.5 x 6 inches Silver Gelatin Print Au Descends on Ag 1988 15.5 x 19.5 inches Silver Gelatin Print Nolan Preece Commentary Art presents us with a parallel reality, clear and close at hand, but simultaneously strange and new. This paradox of verisimilitude and novelty creates a mental frisson that challenges the notion that we truly know the reality that we experience every day. In the work of Nolan Preece, images seem to arise mysteriously, visually present yet materially tenu- ous, from substances that resemble flowing liquids, swirling gases, and thickened light. They move as if of their own volition to form biomorphic entities, faceted architectures, and virtual vistas. These imaginal domains, which shift from fluid to concrete, are abstract yet enigmatically charged. Preece has referred to his work as chemical painting, and he has adapted techniques from photography’s infancy and invented his own new methods for creating images. He has adapted cliché-verre, an antique method for making handmade photographic negatives on glass plates. He covers the glass with soot and by applying mineral spirits, a kind of automatism is activated, with unpredictable images coming into being. In his chemigrams, the artist works with resists and photographic chemicals for developing and fixing the image, to achieve a wide range of complex, fascinating effects which are then digitally enhanced. These techniques have allowed Preece to work with an open, imaginative freedom. There is a sense of perpetual becoming, of constantly discovering new visual worlds. This quality of origination, of an animating energy, runs through the dazzling variety of the artist’s work. It ranges from spatially ambiguous atmospheres, to intensely patterned grids, to visionary biologies, to impacted archeologies. Preece’s work evokes a speculative, poetic space where phenomena are generated, stimulated, and then entered into. The essential qualities of this experience include a sense of translucency, stilled movement, vastness within the intimate, and a quietude that contains within it a spectrum of unsettled emotions. Within these surreal and dream-like mindscapes, we are reminded of the inner space of the psyche, and the outer world of nature, in both its microscopic and macroscopic scales. Concern for the fate of the living world is made explicit in many of Preece’s works, especially those which combine abstract imagery with signs of human development within the landscape. These works express a heightened environmental consciousness, and an awareness of the toughness, fragility, and beauty of the desert, which has always been the focus of his life and work. John Mendelsohn Nolan Preece Biography Nolan Preece was born in 1947 in Vernal, Utah. His parents encouraged his early interest in art, and he was helping his father in the home darkroom at age five. Preece was an avid young photographer, who remembers the impact of his father making a photo collage of what is now Dinosaur National Monument to show what it would have looked like, under water, if a proposed dam were built on the Green River. Preece’s interest in nature has been a constant, from growing up in the desert, to being a river guide in the Grand Canyon, to working as a field photographer for environmental impact statements in the 1980s, to creating an on-going series of landscape photographs. After serving in the army, Preece studied photography at Utah State University, receiving his BA in 1973. Four years later he began his graduate study there in photography, learning the Zone System method of exposure and development, and absorbing the tradition of Western landscape photography. Preece became interested in experimental photographic techniques, and in 1979 he was working with the cliché-verre process using smoke-on-glass as a photographic negative. He accidently spilled kerosene on the glass, and it created unexpected and fascinating forms. He discovered that mineral spirits worked best and perfected his newly invented technique, using the prepared glass in the enlarger and printing the resulting images photographically. In 1981, Preece’s darkroom experiments led him to develop the chemogram, a technique for painting abstractly with chemical processes on silver based photographic paper. The work has shifted from being nonobjective to including images that reflected his involvement with the environmental movement. Throughout, the work has, in the artist’s words, reflected his “relationship with the desert in eastern Utah where I grew up and now the Nevada desert where I currently live. The desert is my home and passion. These resonances flow through this work.” Over the past thirty years, the artist has continued to create images of surprising complexity and beauty, exploring new methods including the use of digital technology. Preece has noted that having been trained in the Ansel Adams tradition of fine art photography, he was able to envision his physically created chemigram print as the “score” and the digitally scanned and manipulated image as the “performance” of that score. In 2013 he met Pierre Cordier, the Belgian who had originated the chemigram in 1956, and persuaded Preece to use this designation for his work. He was inspired by Cordier to use resists of acrylic floor wax and other substances, and began a new and very productive phase in his art. Preece’s work is in the permanent collections of 34 institutions across the country, and his solo exhibitions include Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, UT; St. Mary’s Art Center, Virginia City, NV; Oates Park Art Center, Fallon, NV; Nevada State Arts Council, Carson City, NV; and California State University, Turlock, CA. Nolan Preece Artist Statement This body of work began over thirty years ago, and encompasses prints made with the cliché-verre and chemigram processes. Included are purely abstract works and those that employ recognizable images, and all reflect a passion for discovery, invention, and the natural environment. The cliché-verre is an antique photographic technique for making prints from handmade glass negatives. The artist discovered a way to create beautiful yet mysterious imagery by activating smoke-on-glass with chemical solvents. The works reflect a ratio of approximately half control and half serendipity, along with many attempts and digital enhancements to arrive at the final image. The chemigram process is a mix of painting, printmaking, and photography.
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