Between Breaths: Underwater Plant Portraits from Doolittle Lake by JanaLee Cherneski

Between Breaths, an exhibition of photographs opening at the Norfolk Library on August 1, presents a series of underwater plant portraits taken by JanaLee Cherneski over a period of 15 years at Doolittle Lake.

The photographs are a record of an intimate relationship with place. Explaining the project, JanaLee says: “Beneath the surface I find an entirely new realm of color, movement, relation, and resonance… I am interested in these leaves in this moment with this wind meeting this sun in this water.” The resulting images are a record of a sacred practice of immersion—in all senses.

JanaLee’s work is an effort in conservation, not just of the natural world but also, she says, of humans “as beings capable of a species of attention that does not wish to possess whatever it encounters. By inciting curiosity and wonder, I aim to rekindle the way we see and relate to ourselves, each other and beings of all kinds in this world we share.”

Between Breaths runs through September 3 with a reception for the artist on August 2 from 4-6 p.m., graciously hosted by the Library Associates, and an artist talk on August 9 at 2:30 p.m.

JanaLee Cherneski Artist Bio

Born and raised in Saskatchewan, JanaLee is an artist, writer, and facilitator, who witnesses worlds as they are, and dreams communities as they might be. She is also a scholar and changemaker who experiments across the humanities and social sciences and has held posts at the University of Oxford, Bard College, and NYU.

JanaLee’s way of relating to the world has been deeply formed by the sentience of Saskatchewan’s skies. She loves listening to the genius of specific places and invites natural forces and beings — be they plant, animal, human – to participate as co-creators in her work.

JanaLee Cherneski Artist Statement

Simply put these are portraits of plants in a lake. But not plants in the way we have conventionally been taught to see or think about them. There is something more to their plantness, something at the edge of image and language that is ephemeral, ineffable. Intricate relations between plant, wind, water, sun, and other lake life become apparent the more we consider the elements of each photo.

Growing out of my 15-year relationship with Doolittle Lake, these portraits are an effort in conservation. To be sure they evoke appreciation for the natural world. But the core of my practice is about the conservation of us as beings capable of a species of attention that does not wish to possess whatever it encounters. By inciting curiosity and wonder, I aim to rekindle the way we see and relate to ourselves, each other, and beings of all kinds in this world we share.

I am interested in these leaves in this moment with this wind meeting this sun in this water. A photograph can never truly represent a plant itself or the resonant whole of such relations. Nor can the lake itself: its own reflections of plants on its surface are already blurred and interrupted by other atmosphere. And yet, as we attend to these relations in their entirety, something true still comes into view.

Between Breaths lives on a threshold between the perceived and imperceivable. It invites viewers to behold moments of provisional numinosity; experience fleeting angles of perception; and approach essences that might be glimpsed but not fully named.

Beneath the surface the thinking mind encounters that which cannot be spoken. Language holds too much weight. Lungs rise, and words bog you down.

Each time I dive below I hover in a wondrous moment, wishing it were endless. But it is only an interval, between breath and future breath. Inevitably I must surface.

This tension of lung and tongue weave a veil of longing and awe. Wrapped within my practice is an appreciation for the radiant specificity of every force and being. Even us.