Catherine Davis: The Third Coast

Opening Reception: June 1 from 6pm – 9pm

Stretching some 1,600 miles from the mouth of the Rio Grande in Texas to the Florida Everglades, the US Gulf Coast is vast and complex. Buffered by warm, shallow seas, the water’s edge is consistently humid and mild with abundant sunshine and ample precipitation. Land here is naturally flat, rising on average a few dozen feet above the ocean’s surface. The region is an innate patchwork of both natural and built environments, a tangled combination of history and geography, culture and ecology that reflects an intimate and ever-evolving relationship between man, land, and sea.

The Third Coast is a photographic project that explores the distinct vernacular landscape of this region: newly-built houses rising like monoliths above the tides, industrial pipelines subsumed by muddy water, palm trees as stylized icons, and fiberglass sharks marking toothless tourist displays. Thematically, these photographs investigate the in-between spaces, where the highly constructed experience of the shore begins to breakdown. Tonally, they reflect places caught in the endless process of development and dissolution. More than just describing the topography, however, this body of work explores the Gulf Coast’s visual vocabulary, it’s sense of place, and the recurrent themes that together create the area’s distinct material and cultural identity.

Catherine J. Davis is a fine arts photographer focusing primarily on landscape and place. She has received a Master of Fine Arts from Illinois State University in Normal, IL and a Bachelor of Arts from Austin College in Sherman, TX. She currently lives and works in Dallas, TX.

Header photo: Featured in The Third Coast