Peter Cochrane

Untitled Athenaeum Project

GENERAL IDEAS


  • Plants as life / death cycle 


  • Darkroom prints create traces of the life that once lived at The Athenaeum—the Torrey Pine tree that was out front but has since died, and climbing roses that Kate Sessions proposed / planted

    • As much as these images are a tribute to the history of The Athenaeum, they are also representative of our own desire to preserve. Architecture is spoken of in terms of its monumentality and capacity to stand the test of time. We marvel at Ancient Japanese temples and the ruins of the Roman Forum. The Athenaeum is a gorgeous building with historical roots, some of which are preserved through carvings in its walls. However, plants come and go. We admire their flowers when they bloom and throw them out when they die. But a flower represents the sole purpose of the plant—the need to reproduce and continue its species. These prints are a futile attempt to preserve fleeting life, and a commemorative document of life lived at The Athenaeum.


  • Darkroom as place of creation in destruction

    • The images in this exhibition bring something to life (a new artwork—a photograph) from something dead (a rose, a pine cone) through a destructive act (burning). Pine cones are burned onto silver gelatin paper before being translated to zinc etchings, and roses are burned onto color paper.

    • The darkroom is a place of intimate creation. Photosensitive color paper must be exposed in complete darkness, unlike black and white silver gelatin paper that can be worked with under a red light. To create the rose pieces, I lay everything out in total darkness and set the plant ablaze. In this moment an image is transferred to the paper that comes from the brief dance of light and shadow. The rose, or the cone, becomes its own subject, light source, and afterimage recorded and fixed to paper. 

      • I will have more information about the specific colors used in the rose pieces. I am currently researching powdered chemicals that burn specific colors in order to match the colors of the roses planted by Kate Sessions.


  • The duality of wildfire

    • Torrey Pine—80"x140" main galley piece—35 individual 16x20” zinc panels

I am a Californian who saw the rise of the omnipresent wildfire. Where once they happened infrequently, with the first massive one of memory being in 2005, now they are a constant (I cannot say this project is a comment on global warming or has any eco bent to it—rather that fires are a part of the California psyche and are now an omnipresent way of life). The Torrey Pine is an endangered species that is native to La Jolla and, despite being coastal, is under threat from fires. It also faces extinction from beetles. The fight to preserve the Torrey Pine is arduous and a very human act. It is precious to many, but nature views it with an indifferent eye. It is similar to our own cosmic struggle and sense of self. Considering its extinction presents an existential mirror.

  • Lodgepole Pine—Various smaller zinc panel pieces throughout

The lodgepole pine tree represents the other side of this coin. It is a conifer just the same, but grows across countless acres of the Pacific Northwest. In other parts of the country that face wildfires, such as Montana where I also spent time as a child, the lodgepole is ubiquitous to the point of being unremarkable. Some of the forests of the west are monocultures of this tree. It is a sturdy building material for us, and fuel for an uncontrollable fire. A remarkable feature of the lodgepole is that its cones grow sealed with a resin so as to be preserved until extreme heat releases the scales and seeds within, most typically through wildfire. In this instance, fires are necessary to birth new plants. Forests must be cleared of both dying old growth and their understories in order for new life to take root. In these habitats, wildfires are considered healthy. 

  • Lead flowers (with faux gold leaf?)

    • Lead may be one of the most pivotal instruments in human history. It was a subject for the pursuit of alchemists attempting to change base metals into gold. It was used by the early Romans to create one of the first sewer systems. It is still used to protect us from radiation when we receive x-rays, and boxes of it are made to house radioactive material so that it does not leach into the ground or water systems. It is also unsafe to consume and can lead to renal failure and neurotoxic poisoning. Lead paint was used throughout American houses and now must be removed by hazmat professionals. It is a metal with as many positive as negative traits that is intertwined with human history.

MATERIALS AND THEIR MEANINGS

  •  Darkroom paper

    • Uncertain of its importance at this moment other than its ability to create a ghostly record, and the capacity to accept color where rose buds are

  • Zinc plates

    • Permanent translation of ephemeral image

    • Same process as creating a photograph through the application of a photosensitive polymer onto zinc plate, but a permanent affixing of the image through etching into metal

    • Zinc is also used to create fake gold leaf, which may be used on the lead flowers in places

      • It is like the optical manifestation of the alchemical pursuit—a base metal in to a gold, even if that gold is only to trick the eye

    • Research other chemical properties / societal uses of zinc

  • Manzanita branches + gold thread

    • Manzanita is a coastal chaparral plant that grows throughout the length of California

    • Its blood red bark is reminiscent of the human body—smooth but undulating in such a way as to recall the form of a muscle

    • Stand-in for bodies

      • Wrapping the branches (bodies) in gold is like mummification and, like the darkroom prints, is another futile attempt to preserve


INSTALLATION CONCEPTUALIZATION 

  • 35 16x20” etched zinc plates aligned to make one 80x140” image—the Torrey Pine cone

    • This piece is arranged in a grid to present unity as well as individual distinction. The aggregate image, a Torrey Pine cone on fire, represents the creation of something (in this case the universe as we know it). However, its construction across multiple panels with physical separation between each plate suggests a skip from one to the next. For me this gap represents the theoretical possibility of alternate universes.

      • Because the panels are made individually, rather than as one 80x140” image that is printed whole and then cut up, they work together to create the illusion of a single image, but each is truly a unique object. Even when two edges line up and look to be made of the same material, it is not exactly so. The photosensitive polymer is laid for each panel creating the possibility for minute errors, developer exhausts, patina grows at various rates and to varying effects, fixatives settle unevenly. Though this piece is a cohesive whole, it is also 35 individual objects that took many months to produce—35 sections of 35 universes existing side by side, each with its own potentiality.

  • Gold-wrapped manzanita branches hanging in the rotunda

    • The branches being connected to each other and the walls through the same thread in which they are wrapped is indicative of the "spark of life" or the notion that we all come from the same source and are all part of the same information (big bang stardust coalescing to form planets, oceans, plants, meteors—life, in short—and / or the creation stories of various religions referencing a similar version of our origin and our connectivity)