Field Notes

The Photographer’s Eye Gallery will present “Field Notes,” a collection of works by Oriana Poindexter, a San Diego marine scientist and photographer who creates images from kelp and other sea specimens she draws from the ocean.

Poindexter creates her colorful images not with a camera, but by using a cyanotype process, in which she lays marine objects on light-sensitive paper and exposes them to the sun. This creates an impression of the object on the paper, like a shadow, resulting in a cyanotype.

“Once I realized I could do direct contact printing with materials I pulled out of the water, I could use that and combine all the things I had found exciting, like going out and searching and collecting, and then making these hand based physical objects that were able to translate both the scale and the detail of the giant kelp,” said Poindexter.

Works represented in “Field Notes” use marine material gathered off Catalina Island and the Oregon coast.

The exhibit will open on July 11, with an artist talk at 4 p.m. followed immediately by a reception at 5 p.m. Admission to the nonprofit gallery is free.

Poindexter will conduct a workshop on making cyanotypes on Sunday, July 12, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the gallery. For more information and to sign up, contact the gallery at 760-522-2170.

Poindexter’s photography has been featured in The Smithsonian magazine, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and has been shown at Laguna Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, and Center for Fine Art Photography.