In 2016, Alan Powell was artist-in-residence at the Platte Clove Nature preserve which is maintained by the Catskill Center. Powell’s“ visual experience goes beyond a single image. He scans, pans and sample my environment using the electronic tools related to video, sound, photography, and three-dimensional imaging. “I rarely create an image based on one object/one moment in time, but arrange images and sounds in a montage or collage,” says Powell. The images step beyond the frame. After being captured with a variety of techniques and technologies, Powell constructs the images to knit the environment into a holistic map or to highlight the conceptual relationships between objects, places and people.
Alan Powell has been hiking in woods since he was five years old. He started climbing the Bristol Mountains with my Grandfather on the hills behind his tree farm. His Grandfather would follow old logging roads and he would research both the indigenous history of the place and the eighteenh-nineteenth century history of houses and trails. Powell’s grandfather was fearless about stopping at an old farmers home and asking about the farm’s history. PowelI see the senior part of my life being these studied journeys using photography, video and written text. The only way to get the public to preserve these forest is to use them for recreation, hunting and controlled forestry. Our understanding of habitat is greatly shifting and the conservation movement has a more holistic approach to the interdependency of all things living and non-living.