Earlier this year we were pleased to have the work of Marcy Juran on the walls at our Griffin satellite gallery, WinCam. We wanted to spend more time with her to learn more about her passions, her process and creativity. We love her deeply detailed bouquets of colorful floral bounty, including wildflowers, weeds and grasses and hope you do too. We asked her a few questions, this is the result of that conversation.
In Imagined Gardens, you mix together plants which we may not typically see growing together in nature. How did you decide to pair certain plants together and design their composition?
I typically start with one plant which will be the dominant one in the image – for example Queen Anne’s Lace, or Mountain Laurel, or the blossom of Milkweed. And then I select other flowers, foliage or vines which complement that bloom… sometimes it is with color, sometimes with the shape of the flower or vine, or texture. I move the various pieces around, at times enlarging them in such a way that they may be out of scale with other botanical parts of the image, to create my composition.
Climate change’s threat to native species is a major proponent behind Imagined Gardens. Is climate change a big motivator in your other works and daily life as well?
Climate change is an issue which is increasingly affecting all of us. I live in coastal Connecticut, and in addition to the impact of recent heat waves and storms, am also very aware of the rising sea levels, especially here along the coast. There have been increasing floods with many of the storms in recent years. I also have a large pond in my backyard, which is a favorite subject, so I am photographing it throughout the seasons, and am very aware of the amount of water in it throughout the year.
Recently, I have been working to create a meadow in my yard as part of the Pollinator Pathway, a regional project which is encouraging gardeners to plant native species to support pollinators here in New England. For example, the native milkweed in several of my images (which grows along my driveway) is a favorite host of Monarch Butterflies.
Did you actively search for specific plants to use or did you allow nature to dictate your composition?
I have used a number of plants from my own yard – milkweed, dandelions, mountain laurel, mug wort, ajuga, honeysuckle. Many of the others grow within a few miles of where I live, and I watch for them as I drive around the area, trying to remember where I have seen them growing in other years.
The season for some of these is quite short-lived, so you have to pick them and scan them when you see them, as they may not be there next week! Occasionally, there are “outliers” which are not in the area, for example, lupines, which are not common along the coast here, but grow in other parts of New England. I wanted that beautiful blue, so I had to go out searching for that.
In your description of Imagined Gardens, you mentioned artists and authors who also were inspired by similar landscapes. Have any of their works directly inspired your photography?
J. Alden Weir is an American Impressionist painter who lived in Wilton, CT, which is just north of here. His farm has become a National Park – actually the only National Park which is devoted to one artist! It has a beautiful meadow which appears in many of his paintings.
I also love the quote of Thoreau – “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World”. This became the title of a book where photos of Eliot Porter were paired with Thoreau’s writings. A lot has been written about this quotation, and how it has been interpreted. Here is one easy: https://medium.com/thewildones/henry-david-thoreaus-most-misunderstood quote-3b31dfdeec78
Do you have a favorite John Singer Sargent or J. Alden Weir painting?
I particularly like many of Weir’s paintings which were done on his farm in Branchville. (Connecticut Landscape, Branchville, an oil, is one of these). He worked in oil, watercolor, and pastel, and often incorporated the stone walls and rolling fields of the farm into his work. Very few of the originals are in museums nearby, so I would love to see some of these “in person”, and not just on the screen or in a book.
John Singer Sargent’s watercolors are favorites – I love Gourds, which is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. Not surprising, actually, as my most recent work “Humble Beauty” incorporates photos of fruits and vegetables.
Beyond a photographer and artist, who is Marcy Juran? What would you like people to know about you?
I think that my favorite quote is from the philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel:
Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement.
This really sums it up – I think that one of our roles is to “bear witness” to the wonders of nature around us. Additionally, I love to cook, garden, sing, and walk the local beach. I am constantly consulting the tide chart and the weather. There is nothing quite like a great moody sky over the Sound.
When did you first start photographing and when did it turn into a career?
I probably got my first camera at around the age of 11, but really did not pursue photography with any great interest until grad school at Cranbrook. I spent my earlier studies in art on printmaking and drawing at Brown. After graduation, I became interested in Graphic Design, which became my career, and I worked with many well-known photographers on my design projects.
Although I did do some of my own work in grad school in the wet darkroom, I did not get seriously involved with my own photographic work until digital photography became more prevalent in the 1990’s. I began showing my work locally in Connecticut in the mid 90’s – both photography and printmaking, as well as some work with handmade paper and encaustic, and then began to pursue photography more specifically about ten years ago.
Do you have any upcoming projects which you would like to share about?
I continue to add to the “Imagined Gardens” series, and currently am quite involved with the work of “Humble Beauty”, as it is the height of harvest season. I am also beginning to work on a project involving my pond. And seeing where the now germinating meadow is taking me.
What is your favorite season and why?
Although I completely love that week in mid-April when the trees begin to leaf out in the most beautiful shade of green, and the daffodils and flowering cherries begin to pop, I have to say that increasingly summer is my favorite. I love the wildflowers, the vegetable gardens and farmer’s markets… today, the tomatoes at the market were so lush – lots of field-grown tomatoes have just come into season. Amazing colors and shapes. I love to cook, and to have such incredible produce is a blessing. Plus I can photograph it, and then eat it!
I am also a huge fan of the beach and salt water, so this is the high season to enjoy that, and visually it is spectacular as well.
Are you a gardener yourself? If so, what do you like to grow?
Yes, I am a gardener, and have been since I was given my first tomato plot by my parents at around the age of six. I still grow tomatoes, lots of herbs and greens, garlic, peppers, rhubarb. And as I mentioned, I just started a meadow of native plants. My yard is also filled with ferns, mountain laurel, peonies, and quite a lot of trees – eastern red cedar, pin oaks, white oak, sugar maples, hemlock, white pine, Japanese maples, and probably a lot of others. And also far too many weeds – but of course, a lot of those become subjects for Imagined Gardens!
About Marcy Juran –
Marcy Juran is a visual artist with a practice that includes photography, encaustic and handmade paper. Juran’s focus explores themes of memory, myth, and the passage of time, combining personal narratives with the natural environs of her native New England. Her images have been recognized both nationally and internationally, and exhibited widely in galleries including the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Soho Photo Gallery, the Amarillo Museum of Art, Sohn Fine Art, the Davis Orton Gallery, the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, the SE Center for Photography, and the A Smith Gallery, as well as many regional galleries in New England. Her work has been published in the publications Fraction, Lenscratch and Don’t Take Pictures. In 2021, her body of work Family History | Family Mystery was awarded an Honorable Mention in the exhibition 30 OVER 50|In Context at the Center for Fine Art Photography by juror Arnika Dawkins, as well as being awarded First Place in the 16th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards for Digital Manipulation & Collage. Her book, Saltmarsh Seasons, was selected for inclusion in the Eighth Annual Self-published Photobook Show (2017) at the Davis Orton Gallery and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
Juran holds an A.B. from Brown University, with a concentration in Studio Art, focused on printmaking, with additional studies in graphic design, printmaking, and photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, Cranbrook, and the Maine Media Workshops. She is an exhibiting member of the New Canaan Society for the Arts, the Rowayton Arts Center, and the Ridgefield Guild of Artists, and works from her studio in Westport, Connecticut.
To see more of Marcy Juran‘s beautiful work, log onto her website and find her on Instagram @marcyjuran
