Quin de la Mer

In this critical time of environmental crisis, this piece serves as a poignant conclusion to our breathtakingly beautiful world. Stay Soft Now, Can’t Breathe is a selection of still-moving images accompanied by original sound art created in 2024. It consists of abstract night photography taken with an iPhone11 Pro Max through the window of a moving train traveling from Scotland to NE England. No digital effects or filters were used to create the images. The texture and blur are part of the original photographs as the camera attempted to focus on the ice crystals and mist collected on the exterior window.

In this critical time of environmental crisis, this piece serves as a poignant conclusion to our breathtakingly beautiful world. Stay Soft Now, Can’t Breathe is a selection of still-moving images accompanied by original sound art created in 2024. It consists of abstract night photography taken with an iPhone11 Pro Max through the window of a moving train traveling from Scotland to NE England. No digital effects or filters were used to create the images. The texture and blur are part of the original photographs as the camera attempted to focus on the ice crystals and mist collected on the exterior window.

In this critical time of environmental crisis, this piece serves as a poignant conclusion to our breathtakingly beautiful world. Stay Soft Now, Can’t Breathe is a selection of still-moving images accompanied by original sound art created in 2024. It consists of abstract night photography taken with an iPhone11 Pro Max through the window of a moving train traveling from Scotland to NE England. No digital effects or filters were used to create the images. The texture and blur are part of the original photographs as the camera attempted to focus on the ice crystals and mist collected on the exterior window.

In this critical time of environmental crisis, this piece serves as a poignant conclusion to our breathtakingly beautiful world. Stay Soft Now, Can’t Breathe is a selection of still-moving images accompanied by original sound art created in 2024. It consists of abstract night photography taken with an iPhone11 Pro Max through the window of a moving train traveling from Scotland to NE England. No digital effects or filters were used to create the images. The texture and blur are part of the original photographs as the camera attempted to focus on the ice crystals and mist collected on the exterior window.

Using a Holga 120N camera allows me to make black and white images that appear to defy time. Uncontrollable light leaks and double exposure techniques, help me create ephemeral qualities while home film development using caffenol and sea salt add grainy textures and blotches. These photographs were taken while walking the Roman Aqueduct Trail between Collepino and Spello, Italy, during a breathtakingly beautiful Spring in 2023.

Using a Holga 120N camera allows me to make black and white images that appear to defy time. Uncontrollable light leaks and double exposure techniques, help me create ephemeral qualities while home film development using caffenol and sea salt add grainy textures and blotches. These photographs were taken while walking the Roman Aqueduct Trail between Collepino and Spello, Italy, during a breathtakingly beautiful Spring in 2023.

Using a Holga 120N camera allows me to make black and white images that appear to defy time. Uncontrollable light leaks and double exposure techniques, help me create ephemeral qualities while home film development using caffenol and sea salt add grainy textures and blotches. These photographs were taken while walking the Roman Aqueduct Trail between Collepino and Spello, Italy, during a breathtakingly beautiful Spring in 2023.

Using a Holga 120N camera allows me to make black and white images that appear to defy time. Uncontrollable light leaks and double exposure techniques, help me create ephemeral qualities while home film development using caffenol and sea salt add grainy textures and blotches. These photographs were taken while walking the Roman Aqueduct Trail between Collepino and Spello, Italy, during a breathtakingly beautiful Spring in 2023.

A daemon is an “inbetween” spirit. Long ago, daemons were considered divine power and guiding spirits, and their presence was infused with almost everything, including “place.” I experience this all-encompassing feeling of “placeness” when I create art with the places I visit. Moreover, as I travel, I become a wandering spirit, passing through in a liminal state, becoming a daemon myself, always between interstices of time and place, suspended, transitional.

Requiem for the Salton Sea consists of (50) 6×6″ cyanotype prints on paper co-created with the Salton Sea as it communicated its experience of the Anthropocene. Created in 2020, this ecosystem was in its hospice stage due to increasing salinity, water quality issues, temperature, and eutrophication, which resulted in increased algae and bacteria known as dead zones. The process was a memorial, the completed works a requiem, myself a funeral conductor.

In 2023, I returned to the Salton Sea, and my heart broke as I saw its complete collapse. This work is titled Ecocide: Salton Sea, wet cyanotype on muslin fabric, made with the toxic waste that murdered this beautiful ecosystem, 6×6 feet, October 2023.

In May 2024, the collapse is complete. Warning signs tell visitors not to touch the sea, the foam, the algae, or the mud due to extreme toxicity. Swimming, drinking, washing, or handling is prohibited. Fishing is prohibited. Once the home to millions of migrating birds flying the Pacific Flyway, there are no birds today. The air is painful to breathe. Lithium mining has begun, causing the sea to recede rapidly, exposing the toxic-coated bottom to wind storms and creating a significant air pollution hazard. The Salton Sea mud contains enough arsenic, selenium, and DDT to qualify for disposal in a dump reserved for the most toxic of society’s trash. This image was created using a 1950s Herbert George InstaFlash camera, b/w film, film developed in coffee.

In 2023, I returned to the Salton Sea, and my heart broke as I saw its complete collapse. Using a Holga 35mm camera, I took a roll of color film and souped it in hot water, lemon juice and olive oil before developing it. The image conveys the emotions I felt while communicating with the dead.

Quin de la Mer

Quin de la Mer is an accomplished multi-media artist based in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California. They draw significant inspiration from abstract expressionism in their work. Through a skillful interplay of diverse mediums, Quin’s art illuminates the intricate interconnectedness of the world, revealing the profound yet imperceptible links between humanity, the environment, and the realms beyond. Their creations, characterized by an emphasis on beauty, wonder, and enigma, evoke a profound sense of awe and transcendence, thus defying conventional artistic boundaries. Grounded in a deep connection with the natural world and its non-human inhabitants, Quin’s art boldly traverses the realms of different media, encapsulating the very essence of place. De la Mer pursued a Master of Fine Art degree at both Newcastle University in the UK and the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Currently, they are a doctoral student in the East-West Psychology program at CIIS, where they integrate the subtle, unconscious, and transpersonal aspects of human experience with artistic practice. Their works have been exhibited nationally and globally in various settings, including galleries, public forums, and film screenings. Additionally, they have been an artist in residence in the US and abroad, and their creations have been featured in print and web magazines worldwide.

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