Recognizing the pervading superfluity of everyday photographs, Cassandra C. Jones has collected thousands of other people’s snapshots in both digital and print form. With a belief that there exists a commonality between all of these caught moments that people seem to repeatedly connect with, such as sunsets, horses, and migrating birds.  Photos Taken presents several works from her series titled Rara Avis, meaning "strange bird" or "something rare", including “Compositions”, which take form as both prints and site-specific wallpaper installations and video projects, called “Snap Motion Re-Animations”. Both Compositions and Snap Motion Re – Animations are constructed by compiling these photographs together in groups of like subject matter and then presenting them in ways that tell stories about the romance and power of photographic imagery.

 

At first Jones’ Compositions appear to be patterns of decorative floral motifs. However, the work requires a more intimate interaction with the viewer, as it is revealed through a closer look that the compositions are, in fact, made up of detailed reconstructed photographs of pink flamingos in the iconic lawn ornament stance, a binary symbol of both nature and American kitsch. In Photos Taken, Jones is presenting her site-specific wallpaper installation of these compositions, Rara Avis, through the windows of the gallery, viewable only from the outside. By making the wallpaper solely viewable from the outside of the gallery, Jones forces the viewer back into the environment that we so desperately sought to, almost imperialistically, capture with the camera. The result is that we now view a relative diorama of nature held captive behind glass, similar to the experience found at a museum of natural history.

 

In the back gallery, the Rara Avis compositions, presented in frames, hang elegantly on the wall like ornate depictions of floral arrangements. It isn’t until the viewer looks more closely that they realize they have once again been tricked and are looking at incredibly meticulous metamorphoses of flamingos, not delicate orchids. The graceful precision with which Jones weaves the multiple facets of photographed flamingos into botanic compositions is akin to the result from using a drawing implement.

 

The front gallery will feature the Snap Motion Re-Animation, Rara Avis, a multi-channel video projection made from multiple collected photographs of geese in flight. The resulting image consists of six individual projections creating a virtual V-formation of migrating birds. The fleeting images, changing at accelerated pace, of the geese with their wings at various stages of movement create a harmonious rhythm of motion. In the blacked-out gallery, the sight of such a graceful culmination of individuals’ captured moments creates the underlying sense of oneness that Jones seeks to demonstrate by becoming the missing link and supplying a sort of narrative.  As the artist says, she is “led by the desire to create a counter-effect to convention … in a way, attempting to liberate specific visual clichés by embracing them”.

 

Blurring the lines between her Snap Motion Re-Animation projects the and still compositions, Jones’ Fermata displays ten photographs of horses jumping over a fence. All of the images depict a three-quarter view of the event, a view that Jones has come to recognize as the overruling choice that photographers make when documenting the occurrence. The ten images are hung in an arc formation and when viewed in sequence from left to right give the illusion of watching the horses in motion.

 

According to Jones, her work “ventures to draw connections not only between the photographs that I employ, but also between the photographers who took them, to show that the common things we see…somehow link us together. My art does not lie in the individual photographs that I find and reuse. It is in the organization of these photographs into a new equation”.

 

Cassandra C. Jones is currently in Glass Love at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, which runs until January 13, 2008. She has had solo shows at Vanina Holasek Gallery, New York, NY and Queens Nails Annex, San Francisco, CA, among others. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; Egon Schiele Art Centrum, Cesky Krumlov, CZ; Finesilver Gallery, Houston, TX; Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago IL. Jones’ videos have been shown at Ballroom, Marfia, TX; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; and Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; among others.  Jones will be included in Stretching the Truth at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in May 2008.  Her work has been reviewed in ArtWeek and Art in America.