A joint show featuring the works of fiber artist Kim Keats and fine-art photographer Gary Geboy is as natural as, well, nature. Both are celebrated artists in their genres and they are avid collectors of each others’ work. The show will be both collaboration and continuum – on one end, Kim, constructing works of art from natural elements; and on the other end, Gary, deconstructing nature into elemental shapes, tone and texture.
Kim harvests tree bark to create vessels and forms, then uses basketry interlacing to add contrast through found objects like twigs and bones. Her pieces often follow the plight of trees and are architectonic and totemic. She calls her work “salvaging” nature, never savaging.
Geboy calls his scavenging and simplifying. He too collects 
natural elements at the completion of their life cycle and textures them into backgrounds created from layering glass negatives. The overlap of foreground and background – old and new – is a tonal interpretation of what happens in the physical world when dry leaves curl and fall to the ground or when new shoots of bamboo leave behind the cones that shaped them. Boundaries blur and endings become beginnings.
“Organics” will be on exhibit at the USCB Gallery from January 12 – February 19th. Meet the artists at an opening reception on January 12 from 6 – 8 pm.
