Portal Series

Glass Bottle Beach

Carley’s most recent works focus on an imaginary place crafted from glass debris collected at southeast Brooklyn’s Glass Bottle Beach on Dead Horse Bay. This beach holds glass fragments dating back over a century, from bottles to sea glass. She meticulously creates and photographs small models, digitally processing them to create a surreal world. She draws from traditional landscape painting, incorporating references to its constructed nature, achieved by alluding to photographic effects like lens flare and blur. These images, with overlapping layers depicting various times and depths, forge passages between different views of the landscape, echoing the uncertain nature of dreams and memories. These works survey this imaginary realm, exploring a human-altered landscape through vibrant and unexpected forms.