Surrealism

Mid + West (A visual essay on adaptation and acceptance in relocation/immigration and migration)

Mid + West (A visual essay on adaptation and acceptance in relocation/immigration and migration)
  United States
Acquiring Affinity, location Northern New Mexico + Rural Missouri – January 2019

Some say we are all immigrants but many indigenous people have lived in one location for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. In this series I am addressing the more recent acts of relocation where the moves are self imposed.

The place of one’s birth greatly influences who they are but through moving, new foods, cultures, languages and landscapes await to reshape their very being. Acceptance and rejection play a part in this as well as fear and excitement.

Through The Flowers To Black Mesa, location Northern New Mexico (Black Mesa) + Rural Missouri – January 2019

I was born in the Midwest, moved as a young adult to California, then back to the Midwest to help aging parents. After their passing, I headed west again, this time alighting in New Mexico (Santa Fe specifically). Even though I didn’t really encounter a great deal of differences in people there were subtle language differences, definitely food differences and some culture shifts that required adjustment on my part. The most profound change for me was the landscape.

Path to Ancient Land, location Northern New Mexico (Jemez Cauldera)+ Rural Missouri – January 2019

Here I am exploring how one’s landscape, whether rural, suburban or urban, can utterly reshape them and how through relocation they grow and flourish. They become, in essence, a blending of all former homelands with the present.

Verdure, location Northern New Mexico + Rural Missouri – April 2019
Adapting Pigment, location Northern New Mexico + Rural Missouri – April 2019
TaosMaize, location Northern New Mexico (Taos area) + Rural Illinois – June 2019
TaosMaize2, location Northern New Mexico (Taos area) + Rural Illinois – June 2019
Puye Profile, location Northern New Mexico (Puye Cliff area) + Rural Missouri – June 2019
Saint Albans-Puye, location Northern New Mexico (Puye Cliff area) + Rural Missouri (St. Albans) – June 2019
No More Deliberation, location Northern New Mexico (Jemez Cauldera )+ Rural Illinois – July 2019
GallupLakeside, location Northern New Mexico (Gallup )+ Rural Missouri – July 2019
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Ellen Jantzen

Artist creating photo montages.

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