The photographs of Mary Goodrich portray hidden dimensions of reality that the eye cannot see. The subject matter appears to be the everyday world. There are trees, clouds, fields of grass, the sun and the moon. But the images are so transformed that they take on a fantastical otherworldly aspect. Yet, everything is curiously familiar. Our eyes have not seen such trees and such a moon before. We recognize them from our dreams and archetypal memories. This is how the world looked when it was new - when trees purveyed wisdom and the moon was a Goddess. These images are nourishment for the soul.

Mary Goodrich recreates the dynamic qualities of visionary experience by blending images from three slide projectors onto a single screen. In these multi-image presentations, accompanied by celestial music, one scene melts into the next without sharp boundaries - just as they do in the mind. Starry universes make their appearance on the petals of a flower, the petals then dissolve into the space they once contained. The moon becomes a window to an enchanted forest that grows until the sky is buried in foliage. Time flows at the pace of meditative awareness. New worlds emerge only gradually from the realms where things do not yet have a name. Some worlds are intimated but never fully born. The moment of perception is drawn out until each stage - awareness, enigma, hypothesis, revelation - becomes a separate experience to be savored in its own right.

Andre Kukla, Ph.D
Volcano, HI
1982