Time with Spring in Casita Azul
A collection of photographs on the power of love and time, how it keeps a hold on life with Margeaux Bestard

Online Preview, PreSale | June 15th, Opens at 3pm (PST)
Exhibiting | June 16 - July 31
Virtual Opening | Wednesday, June 16th, 5:30pm PST, Facebook Live
Opening Reception | Wednesday, June 16th, 6:00-8:00pm PST

As the earth begins to soften from the winter’s stiff frost, it creates an environment to break apart the soil. Seeds crack their shells, stretch out new roots, and blossom into the warm atmosphere, yearning for the sun’s rays.  My mentor John Running would talk with me about how as photographers we have the right to stare. While nested in my studio, I take time to watch the light move across the walls. Long light in the winter drapes across seasonal flowers and in the spring as the sun moves higher in the sky my door remains open bringing in a soft box of diffused light. I have always been drawn to nature’s odds and ends; flowers and seeds as subjects for my work, a study of nature's intimacies. I treasure the unique bend in a flower stem or the pleats of a fresh cut poppy. With time I can observe the withered wrinkles of age in my subjects. With a rotating show of delicately placed objects on my table, I watch throughout various stages in their lives, waiting for the time to pick it up and for them to have a conversation with me. I submit myself to the feathers of a quail tail and let it show up through the lens as it pleases.This reminds me of the importance of all stages in human growth. Reverence for freshly cut ranunculus or an aged artichoke blossom which holds its beauty even after it is allowed to move into a petrified state; this work draws on the power of love and time, how it keeps a hold on life. The impermanence of tight lush petals and the value of patience that brings a topo map of time to the surface.

10% of sales from Time with Spring in Casita Azul will go to Grand Canyon Youth. Grand Canyon Youth offers educational outdoor expeditions that connect young people to the transformative power of the rivers and canyons of the Southwest.

https://gcyouth.org

Margeaux Bestard is a fine art and portrait photographer based in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her work is a detail of the gradation in human spirit and nature's intimacies. Her current project is building a series of portraits and still life images in her studio in East Flagstaff, La Casita Azul. A few delicately placed objects on her table are the subjects consisting of nature's odds and ends throughout various stages in their lives; from fresh fruit and flowers that age and eventually move into a petrified state, to silk ribbons curled around eggs on a gold rimmed tea plate with vintage linens and lace, or various types of found feathers. Often depicting an evocative emotion within a bleeding heart in someone’s hand, she is drawn to the power of love and its hold on life through various studies. When creating portraits, she works with people as collaborative models and moves to empower them by exposing their confidant beauty to the camera. Developing stories with an insightful vision on subject and light, her work has a whimsical glow.

When she's not chasing the light with a camera in hand she can be found guiding on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon rowing boats and working as a community advocate.