LINCOLN CITY - The next exhibit in the P.J. Chessman Gallery features two complementary artforms, kiln-formed glass by Kate Saunders and digital prints with augmented reality by Ger Killeen, combining to explore the latest scientific insights into natural forest communities which link above-ground and below-ground in vastly complex and surprising ways.

"Branchings" will open on Friday, Nov. 15, with a reception set for 5-7 pm, and will remain in place in the Chessman Gallery through Dec. 29. The virtual gallery tour will be posted on Facebook on Nov. 16.

Using images of plants, trees, fungi and animals native to the Oregon Coast forests, the artists try to reveal and communicate what Suzanne Simard calls “the beautiful structures and finely adapted languages of the forest network.” They are particularly interested in representing the energy and dynamism of these structures and their analogues in neural networks.

Saunders has long worked with natural images in glass, some of which she magnifies beyond easy recognition to produce a radically altered perspective on common forms. Killeen takes these images as well as his own digital prints as occasions for using augmented reality techniques to draw the viewer underneath the surface of the physical artworks, and down inside an imagined experience of the understory — literally the story or stories which pulse beneath.

All of the augmentations on the physical and digital artworks are easily viewable in the web browser of any mobile device, and need no special app to be viewed.

As an exhibition, ‘Branchings’ is designed to engage the visual, auditory, and tactile senses of gallery visitors, encouraging people to follow different branches of narrative as they move around the physical gallery space and peer inside the virtual world revealed through the portal of their mobile devices.

Visit the virtual exhibit here: https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/13531815/branchings

Biographical Notes:

Kate Saunders works in kiln-formed glass and sculpture. In these works she has employed a unique process with her own photographs, using a photoresist technique to sandblast the images onto the glass and then rubbing enamels into the sandblasted areas to bring out the image. Her work has been shown at the Bullseye Gallery, Guardino Gallery, Mount Angel Library, Randolph New Hampshire Annual Exhibition, and Cannon Beach Gallery. She was a founding member of the Casbah Art Collective.

Ger Killeen is a poet, digital artist and filmmaker. He works with augmented reality, the aesthetics of data, as well as texts. His work has been exhibited at Digital Art Month in Paris, Web3 Gallery in Manhattan, The Hong Kong International AR Art Fair, Café Moskau Gallery in Berlin, and The Shoreditch Arts Club in London. His digital fashion won an award in 2022 at Paris Fashion Week. His short experimental film, "Mycelial Rhapsody," premiered at the 2023 Fungi Film Fest at Cinema 21 in Portland, Oregon in November 2023. His most recent book is "Ghost Topologies- Augmented Reality Poems."

The P.J. Chessman Gallery is located inside the Lincoln City Cultural Center, 540 NE Hwy. 101 in Lincoln City. Gallery hours are 10 am to 5 pm Wednesday through Sunday, and by appointment. For more information call 541-994-9994, head to lincolncity-culturalcenter.org, or connect with us on Facebook or Instagram.