Cheryle St. Onge

My current body of work, Natural Findings began with the idea, that our early foray into the natural world is not only innate, it is familial. When an older sibling offers up a jar of glowing fireflies, or a grandmother puts a Winter Berry on your tongue, we are in a colloquial, familiar manner opening the door to the larger world outside. The photographs from Natural Findings explore the curiosity and awe of our early grasp of nature; a paper wasp nest that appears dropped from Mars, the frog egg masse that on close inspect, possible through a photograph, becomes a gelatinous scoop of stars, a constellation of black dots, soon to be tadpoles. My pictures delve into that personal moment when our fascination, at what has been collected and contained in that jar, box, or bag is visualized on film. The photographs become both the shared means of a longer examination and the conduit of our own private recollection of nature.The collections and process are in the realm of both science and curiosity. These moments of photographs are made slowly and carefully with an 8x10 view camera.