Rare Earth

In his RARE EARTH SERIES, photographer/artist Gary Jones expands his ongoing practice of intertwining historical memory with color-drenched landscape photography at the Warden’s Art Gallery in Mount Holly, New Jersey. This narrative-driven exhibition is meant to incite dialogue and discovery.

Culled from the landscapes within the Whitesbog Nature Preserve, just outside of Browns Mills, New Jersey, the artist reimagines a landscape through the eyes of the runaway slaves of Colonial New England.

In ancient Greek culture, “Arcadia” symbolized an ideal pastoral paradise—a vision of peace, harmony, and utopia. During Colonial America, both Greek and Roman ideals were embraced as cultural standards, representing values to aspire to. As European settlers sought to bring these classical ideals to the New World, Jones attempts to reinterpret this idea of an American Utopia in the native tongue of the African dispossessed.

Envisioning an African diaspora yearning for a place to call home, the artist asks whether the concept of an American homeland has ever been fully realized or whether the idea of freedom will forever remain a figment of our collective imagination.

The exhibition also includes a selection of Gary’s “word art” pieces, expanding upon the idea of landscape as a vessel for historical memory.

His practice meant to purposefully upend America’s bucolic pastoral traditions, the landscapes within Gary Jones’ RARE EARTH SERIES become a stage upon which enslaved Africans seek refuge in a land where such places were few and far between.