North Carolina Museum of Art
Opening Reception | October 9, 2025 | 5 - 9 pm
HEMPHILL is pleased to share Colby Caldwell's newest installation at the North Carolina Museum of Art, garlands (115) unfurled. There will be an opening reception to celebrate the artwork on October 9, 2025 from 5 - 9 pm during NCMA After Hours.
In Colby Caldwell’s garlands photographs, technology yields to nature. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, Caldwell draws inspiration from the Blue Ridge Mountains, using a flatbed scanner instead of a traditional camera. Roaming the outdoors, he scans various plants and natural oddities that catch his eye. Removed from its controlled environment, the scanning process becomes unwieldy and produces images with imperfections—what Caldwell calls “digital glitches”—adding texture to the final work. These glitches reinforce the complex relationship between the artificial and the organic.
Embedded within Caldwell’s enlarged image here is a poem by Bernard Welt, a long-time collaborator. The poem's staccato phrasing echoes the visual glitches in the image, furthering Caldwell’s implicit reminder that, even as technology consumes us, nature persists.
North Carolina Museum of Art
2110 Blue Ridge Road
Raleigh, NC 27607