enpen: Sometimes when I look at your photography I feel like I'm in the middle of such dense vegetation that I'm surprised I can't hear any bird and animal noises and sometimes they make me feel like my eyes must be playing tricks on me. What do you think about as you're in the process of creating one?

Jeremy Kraft: My pieces can be very thick and at times overwhelming. I include spatial cues that are intended to disrupt an overall sense of coherent space, yet come together to work as a unified whole. This can be contradictory to a typical state of visual awareness, hence the tricks.

In an age where it seems as if everybody has a camera, why do you choose to use that medium to work abstract images?

I don't look at what I do as abstraction. I use symmetry to exemplify the forms and shapes that I choose. As for why a camera, I have been photographing for 20 years and have developed a passion for light. Using a camera to "capture" light has led me to a higher state of observation and awareness of the interactions and interconnectedness of all that is around us. The prevalence of the camera and the imagery from it inundates our daily lives and even our global consciousness. Most of these images make a direct visual statement to the viewer. In my work, I make an attempt to break up the conception of "the image." Through the interleaving of planes and spaces I am engaging the viewer to move through the piece differently than they would an image, I offer the viewer a place to wander and wonder. Maybe that is abstraction…

You're charged to find one iconic aspect of Olympia that you find to be emblematic of this city and work it into an art installation. What would you choose? Why would you choose that? And what would you do with it?

One of my favorite things to work with are the blossoming fruit trees and gardens in the neighborhoods of Olympia. Walking the eastside, westside, southside, and outer limits of town in the spring sunlight can be a real treat if you keep your eyes open. Many of the pieces I have created from these walks have the spiritual atmosphere of a cathedral. I have at times called them "Fractal Mandalas" however, I am now reluctant to use the term "fractal." I recently came across the term Yantra (similar to Mandala) meaning a diagram intended to concentrate thought on the divine. This definition has given me yet another clue toward my own understanding of the pieces I create. What I work with is the primal energy flows that fractal mathematics attempt to articulate. Its patterns, tendencies, habits, choices, and dreams are the basis of our very existence. I capture that momentarily, usually at 125th of what we deem is a second's breath of light. To see my work adorn the walls of homes and public space in Olympia and beyond, to share my vision, to offer up these pieces as physical manifestation of my meditation on the divine…that is my dream, that is my work.

After being introduced to Wagner's music Claude Debussy often told his contemporaries that he felt his own music to be poisoned in that he struggled to escape Wagner's influence. What influence have you found yourself struggling the most to break free from?

I look at this from a different perspective. I draw influence and inspiration from so many places; musicians, photographers, poets, painters, the eastern philosophies, Gaia theorists, plant medicines, metaphysics, indigenous cultures. I haven't ever felt the need to "break free" from these, almost the opposite. I've always tried to get closer to them so I can understand them from the inside out. What I feel has tied all of these together has been a deep respect and relationship to nature. If any thing, I've had to break free from the concepts of a prevailing culture that is so disconnected with nature and therefore disconnected with what its true self can be.

Jeremy Kraft's work can be seen throughout February and March as part of the Petal, Leaf, Stem group show at Artisan's Cafe. The opening reception is Friday, February 1 @ 7pm.