Art Exhibit in Taos, NM

The shadow of a bird in flight brings life to her hands inscribed with the tattoo of a bird.

On exhibit at ChincharMaloney in Taos, NM https://chincharmaloney.com/shop-art/alice-garik

are fifteen of my unique palladium prints. That the black and white palladium prints are in Taos is significant because in Zuni culture the use of black and white in their pottery represents the upper world. The featured print here of her hands crossed in a flight movement with her bird tattoo relates to the world of spirit.

My palladium prints are handmade using the traditional analogue darkroom techniques of making negatives, either camera-less or photographs with a 4X5 large format camera. Brushing palladium on handmade Japanese gampi, I layer my negatives and expose them using the sun. The resulting montage is spontaneous and suggests movement with the images embedded in a paper with the tactility of silk.

Art and Poetry

Palladium print of Irish Moss found in the intertidal zone in the Gulf of Maine. Irish moss shields many sea creatures which inhabit this mossy turf.

When in the Gulf of Maine the sea ebbs, the seaweed named Irish moss is revealed. Irish moss cushions living things in layers. Rachel Carson describes this as “life exists on other life, or within it, or under it, or above it” in her book “The Edge of the Sea”.

At Arts Gowanus Open Studios, October 19 and 20, noon to 6 PM, 69 Second Ave., Brooklyn, I will display this camera-less, palladium print in collaboration with this poem by poet Diane Mehta.

Vent a dome, invent a habitat

for tubeworm, sea-stout, eelpout

waltzing, 700 degrees in love.

They must know their origin

is hydrothermal swirling,

that fate is motion-of-lfe

agitating to occupy the world.

Art on Exhibit

Palladium print of abstract photographic collage of a woman's legs supporting a newborn baby surrounded by blossoming oak leaves in palladium painted with red and green pearlescent watercolor is about our interdependence with trees. We breathe oxygen which trees release during photosynthesis and release carbon dioxide which the trees take in for their own nourishment.

This November 2024 I have two special, to me, artworks on exhibit in a juried exhibition called “Spectrum of Exposure” at BWAC, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY.

These two works reflect my desires that women, children and nature will flourish despite the violence and destruction we are witnessing. I will share my vision for this particular artwork, “Breathe”, which I am featuring in this post.

I have developed this work with layers of photographs of a woman and her baby, branches of an oak tree and the blossoms of this oak tree. The woman with her birthing baby seem to support the branching oak. The blossoms of the oak tree drape around them. I have printed all the negatives using palladium, which I brush onto handmade Japanese gampi paper. Then I painted green and red pearlescent watercolor. The green is for photosynthesis that trees use to convert carbon dioxide into sugars and release oxygen, which we breathe. The red is our blood, the carrier of oxygen in our bodies.

This work of life and breath is my offering to women, children, plants and animals worldwide.

12/12 Exhibit at Est. Gallery

Photograph of an Iris flower, printed on gelatin silver paper, part of a series for exhibition and sale

One of my prints, from my gelatin silver Iris flower prints, is part of an exhibit at Est. Gallery from Dec. 12, 2024 to Jan. 12, 2025. The curator, Emily Chiavelli, chose art works that didn’t exceed 12 X 12 inches. I am thrilled to have my artwork among the 100 other artworks chosen from over 1,000 entries for this exhibit. Est. Gallery is in Brooklyn, New York.

Art and Poetry

Dandelion seeds are dispersing and fly as if they had wings. They intersect the tattooed serpent-dragon to symbolize our ability to create and nurture.

We must be so bitter

without wishes

not to send the seeds

of the dandelion’s rosette

parachuting, and keep it intact.

More startling yet

we bloom peonies on our skin,

dispense their scent;

hold exoskeletons of insects near,

carry serpents on our backs.

—-Diane Mehta

In an era of climate warming, rising oceans, biodiversity extinctions and existing oppression of women, my intention is to create visual narratives that honor our being embedded within the natural world.

Poet Diane Mehta has chosen 15 of my artworks to respond with her poetry. Her poems provide new perspectives to my artwork. They create a conversation between the visual and the words. The poems open new ways to experience the art. Here is a PDF of the artwork and poetry.

School of Visual Arts Bio Art Residency 2025

The tail of a shrimp enlarged to show its architecture in this palladium print on handmade Japanese gampi.

I felt privileged to be a part of this Bio Art Residency this May/June of 2025. I explored using microscopes to examine sea creatures and seaweeds. This exploration gave me impetus for new work. At the end of the residency we did exhibits of our work. Here are connections to some of the work I exhibited. https://www.alicegarik.com/work/sea-eye/ https://www.alicegarik.com/work/stars-snakes-sea/ https://www.alicegarik.com/work/biomorphic/

This large, 16 X 20 inch, palladium print is the tail of a shrimp.

Power, Privilege and Identity

"Cascade" is an artwork displayed at Coffey Park in Red Hook, Brooklyn in the summer of 2025 as part of an exhibit titled Power, Privilege and Identity.

I identify with the powers Nature gives us and our interdependence with Nature. Recently my work “Cascade” was printed on a banner for an exhibit surrounding Coffey Park in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The theme of the exhibit was “Power, Privilege and Identity” which fits the diversity of people who live there.

In my work, her tattooed snake is a symbol of transformation and renewal. Her cascading roots are like the roots of the trees surrounding her in the park. They speak of our needs for stability, home and nourishment that should be available to all people.

My other banner is titled “Breath”. This work is about our interdependence on trees for the oxygen we breathe. This work is also on my website under “ECO FEMINISM”.

Two of the sponsors for this exhibit are Red Hook Art Project and Arts Gowanus.

A PDF of Totemic Objects from the Ocean

200-400 eyes of the sea scallop.

Please click on the sentence below to view this PDF:

Through processes of transformation I present these palladium prints of objects from the ocean.

I have placed a few works from my current ocean portfolio in the above linked PDF. These works have grown from my sense of sanctuary in long walks at the ocean’s edge during this time of Covid lockdown.

Feeling wave upon wave wash over the sand moved me into the cyclic and expansive motion of the ocean. To express the ocean’s vastness and materiality, I pick up remnants of sea life washed onto the sand.

Placing these fragments of sea life directly into my enlarger, I make camera-free large 16 X 20 inch negatives to contact print using brushed palladium metal on translucent Japanese gampi paper and expose the negatives and paper using the direct rays of the sun.

When I place these fragments in my enlarger, the depth of field is similar to a lens that is wide open on a large format camera. Some details are sharply focused while others are softly embraced.

Using palladium allows for tonal distinctions of extreme subtlety. Sometimes when I paint the palladium on the paper, I paint only the shape of the object and leave the rest of the paper open. This I have done with the corals. Centering the corals allows for the concentration of their forms.

Spiders Then and Now

A tattooed spider seeming to crawl into an Iris flower. The spider is from a photograph.

My work is often inspired by the close relationship between tattoos and the honoring of plants and animals by other cultures, both past and present.

At the Brooklyn Museum is a small exhibition of jewelry, pottery, hunting tools and other objects of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Pre-Columbian time. One of the objects is a gold Chiriqui pendant of a spider whose legs end in human hands. This pendant served as an active extension of its owner, like tattoos, and a communicator of awe for a creature of nature.

An artist whose work includes spiders is Louise Bourgeois who saw spiders as elegant, fearsome and protective.

Chiriqui spider pendant in gold.
Gold pendant at The Brooklyn Museum from Costa Rica

Tattooed New-York

Palladium work of a woman's hands with tattoos. Above her hands is a photograph of a bird in flight.

In the spring of 2017, my work was part of the exhibition “Tattooed New-York” at The New-York Historical Society. This exhibition traced the history of tattooing in New York starting with the native peoples to our times. It was curated by Cristian Petru Panaite.

My piece, “Hands Fly”, was exhibited with work that expands tattooing from the personal into art.

Tattooing was and is a part of human cultures globally.