Karen Klein photo.com

I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…Mary Oliver

I moved to Sarasota in August of 2013, and fell in love with Siesta Key. The beautiful expansive view of the perfect clear sky, turquoise Gulf and the white crystal quartz sand was very seductive.

Yet in my exploration of the beach, I kept discovering little "events" that existed only for that moment in time. The weather, the tides, the people, the birds all contributed to a constant revising of these found moments. They required awareness, and were easily overlooked by the larger picture beauty that surrounded me.

I photographed and now share these because they are reminders of brief instances of beauty in nature.

These diptychs and triptychs came from documenting the ever changing environment on the beach. I saw them as visual dialogues.

Picking up shells, and then closely observing them, I decided to record the infinite beauty of their design. They were all worn and who knows how old and from where they came, but I felt they held stories in their surfaces. The shells in Finding Other were separate finds but looked as if way back when, they were one as their color and markings seemed to match.

And the sand was in constant rearrangement. Sometimes the wind, birds, or people would inadvertently add some sea weed and I would photograph these “conversations”.

The cure for anything is salt water - tears, sweat, or the sea.   Isak Dinesen

I went to the beach in the early morning after a storm and found a totally different environment than the morning before.

The light was flat and the tide was out. The sand that was exposed was all about form; sculptures that kept evolving as the tide rushed in and out.

I believe the path to authenticity is full of thought, doubt, isolation, insight, choice, acceptance, evolving and ultimately in proceeding. In Focus, Out of Memory is the visual narrative I created to portray real and imagined incidents - personal, social and cultural - that we encounter on that path. As this work evolved, I came to understand these experiences were personal as well as universal. Books, poems, music, conversations with friends; these validated my exploration. We are seekers on a path, and our choices continue to define us in this lifetime.

In Focus, Out of Memory portrays a journey that is at once unique and common as it explores who am I/are we, who was I/were we, and who am I/are we becoming.

This portfolio contains images that are of memory, but also incorporates my exploration of other ideas and processes.

Some are photomontage, layered and manipulated images and others document something that I noticed, and wanted to remember.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. Rumi

My work often involves memory. This portfolio contains images that are of memory, but also incorporates my exploration of other ideas and processes, and continues my interest in visual layering to create a narrative that is both provocative and accessible.

I use photomontage as my visual language to create dream-like environments. I combine my scanned film and digital imagery to create the symbolism, metaphor and archetype I use to explore themes of aging, sex, hope, delusion and self-discovery.