Emma Starr “Imbues” SALT with Beauty

For the month of June, SALT Gallery (830 Fleming St., www.saltislandprovisions.com) will feature “Imbue,” a collection of works by visionary Key West artist Emma Starr. To celebrate, SALT will host an opening reception at the gallery on Friday, June 10 from 6-8 p.m.

Starr, who signs her work, “emjay”, is a magician of sorts. She creates ineffable images from the Zen power of empty landscape, an enzo of all and nothing, when this becomes that…like magic.

Often the figure is landscape, and the landscape is figurative, but there is a quality to her point and shoot plastic camera images so direct, it stirs.  Perhaps because the images are not photoshopped but made from film, even expired film, that the ghostly images emerge.  They are haunting.  

We are accustomed to seeing Emma’s Polaroids, but this new body of work is apart from that. 

“The beautiful imperfections of expired film and lo-fi cameras create an unadulterated impression of nature’s harmonious shapes,” Starr says. “The intermittent presence of semi-submerged human form represents the vacancy of busyness…something we often forget to make time for as we reside on this island rock we call home. Grain, blur, and desaturated colors are the essence of the final image.”

Starr’s work will be on display at the gallery from June 1-30. SALT Gallery features an eclectic collection of local art, local sea salts, jewelry, pottery, wine and Florida Keys honey. Gallery owners Maria Sharpe and Laura Richardson, aided by expert Gallery Director Sarah Plaia Davidson, feature a new artist each month at SALT. For more information, call 305-517-6088 or visit www.saltislandprovisions.com.

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