Rosenberg Gallery, November 12, 2026 - January 22, 2027

 

Goucher College’s Rosenberg Gallery presents Phenology of Light: Ephemeral/Ephemerals, a solo exhibition by Maryland-based artist Karen Klinedinst. Featuring large-scale cyanolumen prints created with native spring ephemerals, the exhibition explores grief, renewal, memory, and the fleeting cycles of the natural world.

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Klinedinst is a visual artist exploring place, our relationship with nature, and the environmental impact we have on the world around us. Working across digital, analog, and alternative photographic processes, she creates images that consider time, memory, and impermanence.

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Walking has always been essential to Klinedinst’s creative process. Since the death of her husband in 2022, it has also become a vital means of processing grief. Each spring, she walks in search of signs of life after a long, dark winter, collecting native ephemerals such as Bloodroot, Dutchman’s Breeches, and Virginia Bluebells as they briefly emerge from the forest floor. Their annual cycle of emergence, disappearance, and return mirrors her own journey through grief and into new life.

 

Inspired in part by Anna Atkins’s pioneering Photographs of British Algae (1843), Klinedinst uses the experimental cyanolumen process to honor the fleeting lives of these plants. She dips foraged ephemerals in cyanotype sensitizer and arranges them on long-expired black-and-white photographic paper discovered in her studio, giving the obsolete material new life. The compositions are exposed outdoors to the sun’s ultraviolet light, allowing plants, chemistry, weather, and light to shape each image.

 

The process asks Klinedinst to relinquish control and embrace unpredictability, surprise, and serendipity. The resulting cyanolumens are scanned to preserve a moment in time, while the original works remain chemically unfixed and will continue to change. Like the plants they depict, the photographs themselves are ephemeral—a meditation on impermanence and the possibility of finding beauty within it.

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Exhibitions Details: 

• Opening Reception: November 12, 4-8PM - Rosenberg Gallery

 

Artists: Karen Klinedinst