Winter in northeast Ohio is a time of wonder as light and shadow dance on a fresh canvas of snow. Gone is the sound of the leaves along with the debate about who is most colorful, which tree is tallest, who has the most interesting shape. Devoid of foliage each tree appears to have roots on both ends and the dead, camouflaged in snow, stand side by side with the living. Walking this landscape, my footsteps the only sound, I am rendered silent in a wonderland.

Fulfilling a promise, an “assignment from within”, the winter of 2024 (a winter without snow in NE Ohio) was spent editing 35 years of trees. Each file revealed a sense of place, feelings not forgotten, each alive with sound and memory. I had no agenda (though a Trees book is long overdue), the exercise was open ended in nature. Image editing often changes what you thought you were building, entire projects coming to the surface during the process.

What started as the Trees project became a body of work I call “Winterness”. My favorite subjects made in my season, and in my favorite place; home. Close and careful study of winter’s effect on the land would also reveal Winterness in ways that were not trees.

The tonal scale and brightness of this work compares favorably to music; a major scale utilizes all of the white keys, the black keys played rarely and act as syncopation. The four separate portfolios in Winterness each represent individual statements, the sum of all the parts a larger theme.

Arranged on the editing table, 4 separate bodies of work, 38 images,  all quietly whispered the same emotion — Winterness.

Chris Coffey

Winter 2025

The work in Portfolio III are abstracts made in the lands surrounding the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas Rivers. Images of the ice on the ground were made when the temperatures were extremely low and it is not uncommon to see air bubbles under the ice as well as random objects blown in by the wind. Patterns observed in nature are frequently repeated in other natural situations. The repetition of line and flow in direction are patterns also found in sand dunes, skies, beaches and even in woodgrain. Some situations are a mystery as seen in the frozen pond containing circles of various sizes dusted in a snow that resembled confectioners sugar. The same geometry repeats itself in the frozen cattails and the silver pond images. The wonderful triangles of ice were made visible because of the light at the time, an effervescent luminance that was pearlescent in color from a featureless January sky. A different light would have interfered with the subject. The geometric shapes were caused by a very rapid drop in temperature over a couple of hours and dissolved as the temperature rose.

Winterness Portfolio III is comprised of 10 Silver Gelatin exhibition prints made from large format negatives by the artist, selenium toned for permanence, and mounted on museum materials.

Portfolio IV, a departure in subject echoes the same bright tones as the other works in this movement. An overnight snow event prompted me to head to the Cuyahoga Valley with hopes of wet snow clinging to the trees. A difference in microclimates between home  (South Akron) and the Valley meant I found only a powder upon my arrival. Convinced the day was a waste I decided to start walking, following a mantra that I live by; there is always something to learn.

Paralleling a road I’d driven a thousand times I walked a fence-line normally obscured by high weeds and trees. This fence, the boundary around a working field, drew me in with its repetition of pattern. What stopped me in my tracks however was the breaks in the pattern, overlaps, places where a tree had fallen requiring repair to the fence. The powdered snow in the field on the background provided a perfect canvas. 

The edges of things in the world are where the interesting things happen. The silence between musical notes, words divided and then restarted by punctuation. The interruption of that man-made repetition is what appealed to me in these fences. But Boundary work connected with me in a personal and historical manner as well. 

My grandfather who passed the year I was born traveled as a “ranch hand” working on some of the big name ranches in West Texas and Eastern NM. Men who did this kind of work had to do everything from breaking horses to herding cattle. Grandfather was in demand for his fence building and repair skills, not an easy thing to do in the hard pack caliche dirt of the Llano Escatado. Several of the images in this portfolio involve patching a break in the fence and I think of him each time I view them.

In my sixth year we moved from Coastal Texas where trees grow wide to Lower Michigan where they grow tall. My walk to school was under a canopy of Elms that reached for the sky, blocking out the sun on summer days with the last 200 steps of my journey skirting a city park populated by Pin, Burr and White Oaks. My arrival to the 3rd grade coincided with the arrival of Dutch Elm disease and in one week the Elms were cut down to prevent them from falling on houses and people. The change in light and temperature was profound and I felt the loss in my young bones. When given free time in art class I began drawing from my memories of those Elms a stark, “Winter-ness” using only white and black crayons. The experience of walking under those Elms and recording my love for them, for all trees, has informed my photographs for 35 years.

Trees are the lungs of the Earth, they are the thing in nature most like us — reaching for the sky, each other and healthiest when growing with others of their kind. A tree grown in a windless environment would snap in half and die at an early age as the movement of the wind contributes to its strength as much as water and light do. So it is with us — it is the trials of living that help us grow strong.

July 2023