You’ve Departed, but You’ve Not Yet Arrived
Experiencing the in-between in Liminal, photographs by Kathy Spence at The Witliff Collections
For a lot of things in life, black and white boundaries do not exist. The word liminal, by definition, means to exist between the spaces of two or more boundaries. Liminal spaces can be both physical, like a commute to work, or psychological, like a person going through a divorce. During a commute, you are not at home, but you’re not at work yet either. You exist in the space between, driving your car or taking the train. Similarly, during divorce, an individual has lost the familiarity of their partner and routine, but has not yet been single long enough for it to become a firm concept in their mind. They exist with a mindset between the two mental headspaces.
Throughout the week, I visited The Witliff Collections, a museum, archive, and research center on the seventh floor of Texas State University’s library. The museum is free to all outside visitors and university students. It contains many works focused on Texas history and showcases artists based in Texas. The museum is already special because it’s housed in a place built for academic study. Walking inside felt so strange… I went from this place of late-night grind sessions and stress tears to a quiet, calm space of creativity and celebration. It didn’t quite feel like I was still in a library, but it also didn’t feel entirely like a museum because I subconsciously knew I was still on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library.
The Witliff is home to many collections on display, ranging from photographers, musicians, filmmakers, and other artists. Amongst the walls and centerpiece sculptures, I found myself pulled back to one particular photographer’s work. Kathy Spence, a photographer working in Beaumont, Texas, has a collection on display titled Liminal that explores spaces between transition. In a way, it felt like a metaphor for my experience in The Witliff, with the museum itself being that liminal space. I do not feel like I’m in a museum, but I’m no longer in the academic library space either. It was a unique experience that made me feel like I had disappeared from reality for a while.
The photographs are of marsh landscapes shot in the early morning or late evening, the sun fighting with the shadow and mist to reveal the landscape. I was most drawn to these images because they reminded me of my hometown by the coast. In South Texas’s early mornings, the humid climate produced such a quiet and calm morning atmosphere that I’ve come to treasure, and I can almost feel these images on my skin as I remember how the mist would cling to my clothes. During those mornings and evenings at home, I would feel so calm in knowing that I could take a moment to breathe as I stood in this transitional moment of sunrise or sunset. To take notice of things that only existed in those fleeting minutes.
One of the pictures on view, Morning Glory, depicts a scene of a softly obscured, flat marsh landscape. The brush in the foreground has a desaturated, straw-like texture. It makes me want to run my hand across the top of it, but it also makes me wonder how many snakes might be hiding in it. A few pretty pink flowers cluster up in the left corner of the frame, catching my attention. I love the pop of color they bring to the photograph, but I also might be obsessed with that shade of pink. As a landscape, the photograph is divided into two parts, earth and sky, but it’s unclear where one ends and the other begins. The foreground holds the brush, and as we travel deeper into the distance, we see a pond, and even further reveals the treeline. Blankets of fog layer across each element of the photograph, giving it this difficult-to-pinpoint transition and ephemeral moment.
The photographs evoke my senses, and I badly wish to take a deep breath in these scenes to smell the fresh, wet air that gently rests on the ground. The fog concealing and revealing the landscape makes me feel like I’m peering into a hazy memory. The rising sun abstracts the landscape with light shadows and soft lighting, which, combined with the blurring fog, creates a space that doesn’t feel like reality. The photographs have an almost painterly quality about them. One of my photography professors often said that good photography would not make sense as a painting, but I think Spence’s work in Liminal lightly looks past that line between paint and photo to create a new experience. The exhibition occupies the space between these two mediums, and Spence executes it beautifully.
I adore Liminal. Life is so very hectic and fast-paced that I often forget those treasured and soft mornings when it’s not quite time to begin my day, where I don’t feel obligated to do any tasks because it’s not yet “daytime.” In experiencing the exhibition, my stress feels as weightless as the fog, and my problems disappear as Liminal takes me to a new headspace for a little while.
I learned that these photos were all taken with Spence’s smartphone camera, an ordinary object that most carry daily. In a way, it’s a space between professional and regular photography. It makes me wonder how many scenes I’ve walked by without regard to them. How many transitional moments I’ve missed because I didn’t look in time. How many details I overlooked because I didn’t look long enough. I am, in Liminal, reminded to look. To notice. To be patient. To experience this momentary transition in its entirety without haste or uninterest.
The photos in their small format invite their viewers to step closer to get an intimate look at their contents. The landscape’s haze hid forms that I could only notice when a short distance from the frame. For example, returning to Morning Glory, I didn’t see the pink flowers before getting closer to the work. Then I realized how the clouds looked like trees, and I took note of how the soft pinks in the sky tied in with the pretty pink flowers. Then I saw how the trees furthest from the camera looked, almost floating as the fog covered their trunks. The moments Spence photographs are frozen moments in time, but in reality, these moments come and go very quickly. In Liminal, Spence highlights the importance and beauty of these shifting moments. Oftentimes, we are occupied by so much in our lives that we may not have time to see the importance of moments like these. How they might enrich us as we travel between boundaries.
Experiencing this exhibit reminds me to stop for a moment, pause my seemingly endless rush, and notice what’s around me. Experiencing The Witliff, since I was in a place that did not feel like a museum or a university campus, allowed me to do this. My morning walks from my apartment to my first class allow me to do this. There is importance in transition, whether it is a moment of calm, or a moment to question things you don’t get to ask when you arrive at your next destination. You are not bound to Point A’s or Point B’s agenda yet. You get to experience the journey as you make your way. Liminal exists in many of Spence’s photographs, and The Witliff is home to nine. The printed images are framed in beveled wood and have a large white border between the picture and the frame, giving the work room to breathe. The nine works are hung gently against a light blue, but not baby blue, wall that lends an airy atmosphere to the entire exhibit.
The photos hang in a linear transition from one image to the next, inviting the viewer to start at one end or the other and make their way through the experience. Four of the nine pictures were stacked on top of each other as duos. Those duos looked, color-wise, like opposing atmospheres. For example, as pictured above, Pipeline shows a disappearing view of a road (or a raised wooden walkway) that exists with warm tones. In contrast, Bayou #1 is a very cool colored image that shows a subject within the landscape.
Part of me wishes this exhibit had more wall space so each photograph could have its own moment. I found myself trying to draw connections between the stacked duos, and I feel it took away from my experience. Or maybe I’m just an easily confused viewer who’s thinking too deeply into arrangements and not about the artwork itself. Perhaps they were stacked so that I would mentally feel the stark transition from one work to the next as they lay more obviously on top of each other, signaling how sudden some transitions in life can be. I’m not yet experiencing Bayou #1 because lingering thoughts of Pipeline are still in my mind. Almost like not being able to let go of the past because it was ripped away from you so suddenly, and not being able to move forward because of it.
Similarly, I found the entire room to have the same effect on me. Two other exhibits occupy the space, all under the name Spirit of Place, which felt separate from Spence’s work. One of the exhibits, Heart and Soul by Matt Lankes, showcased images that captured various musicians ‘hearts and souls’ in their environments of performance. The other, Connected Sovereignty, contains many photographers who highlight the right of Indigenous people to represent themselves in all forms of media, and how they have been misrepresented in history. While, of course, these are three separate exhibits housed in the same room, I found myself trying to draw connections, thinking about how these three concepts related. Cathy Spence’s work felt out of place in this room, hanging next to cultural and historical photography.
Liminality is something that I often overlook. In Spence’s work, I am reminded of the beauty that exists in these short-lived moments and the things that lie within them. A message that I feel like, especially today, is overlooked by many. Headphones in, heads down, guarded in ourselves, and drowned in our worries. The world is so terrifying, but these transitional moments, no matter how big or small, are extraordinary experiences. Whether it’s a lovely sunrise, as Spence shows us, or the life transitions I grow to fear.
Significant transitions like moving away from home as a college student, getting that first big interview, or looking into your first investment can be terrifying. We often can get so caught up in these worries and fears that those moments pass us by, and we’re left to wonder what we missed out on, what we might have experienced if we had not been so anxious or stressed. I remember being so worried about how I was going to make friends my freshman year of college that I ended up making no friends at all. In that moment of transitioning from dependent to independent, I failed to experience it as I should have. I let worries and overbearing hope take over, and I missed out on so many opportunities.
Don’t forget to experience those in-between moments before they pass by. Take advantage of your time during them, as they can shape how you move forward. Travel from A to B and take in all that you pass, notice every detail, and take advantage of the silence the journey may provide you or the noise that you might not experience once you’ve arrived at your destination. Something as simple as walking from your front door to your car as you make your way to work can lay the subtle foundation for what the rest of your day might look like.