TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

Inspired by nature and driven by climate change, Darya's work always includes scientific research that weaves into the creative process. For this project Darya has combined various digital and alternative photo processes with sustainable art practices methodologies. 

Amalgamated Landscapes is an ongoing series of cross-processed artworks -  a multilayered map of artists meandering through the local landscape of Colorado. Consciously collected natural artifacts – stones, bark, flowers, seeds, fungi, and more – were scanned and then returned to their place of origin. The resulting cyanotypes are each etched with a unique pattern that delineates the associated hiking path as recorded by GPS. Resembling wind movement and shadows, these “drawings” tell a story of artist and object in a time and place: the complex, changing ecology of Colorado. The heat and the burn of the laser amalgamated with cyanotype process embodies the sun, the sky, and surrounding landscape into one entity. 

The series were started during Covid-19 as a response to isolation, evolving into a project celebrating and examining local ecology. Darya worked with a local woodworker and framer to create one of a kind frames specific to the location. In the recent decades Climate Change has driven local populations of Mountain Pine Beetles to explode leading to destruction of western North American pine forests. Since 2004 unusually warm winters, hot summers in combination with matured pine forests have caused  a massive forest insect blight seen in North America since European arrival. The signature blue stain of the pine is the symbiotic fungus without which beetles cannot survive in the trees.The artwork responds to these changes by being framed with Beetle KIll Pine, preserving as much of the original  tunnels in wood as possible.