In simple rotations of old “American West” postcards, from the time when John Wayne was filmed roaming the deserts of Utah, Phoenix Ostermann’s Ways of Seeing reinvents old imagery of iconic Western landscapes into kaleidoscope compositions.

In her artist statement for the show at the Marmalade Branch of the Salt Lake Public Library, Ostermann poses the questions, “Are there any original thoughts? Do we not just reference, borrow, sample, allude, extract, etc. from the past? And we hope others won’t notice? Or is it that we don’t realize what we are doing and innocently take the credit?” As a mixed-media collage artist, Ostermann reinvents, samples, extracts from vintage postcards by way of orientation—reinterpreting the iconic southwest landscapes into fractals of symmetry, repetition and organized chaos. Usually collage artists use cutting to manipulate original images into new ones. Yet, Ostermann maintains the integrity of the vintage postcards while still achieving new imagery.

Even the show’s title is gleaned from the original publishing house that put out these vintage postcards, cut and reapplied in a new context. “Ways of Seeing” feels imperative, asking us to question our own ways of seeing classic images of famous landmarks. Inverted and rotated, we now begin to see something new, the formations creating fantastical reflections and unexpected vantage points that reinvent the images. In “Grand Teton Loop,” Ostermann arranges three cards of the same image so the roads connect into a never-ending road that feeds itself, reminiscent of the optical illusion riddled scenes of devolving/evolving imagery in M.C. Escher’s work.

Whether using one postcard in multiples or different postcards in conversation, Ostermann fixes the horizon lines to create what looks like a reflection when mountains gleam in the water below in works like “Flaming Gorge” and “Toll Gate & the Palisades.” In “Crystal Geyser” she uses two of the same postcard on a slight diagonal, rotated to face each other to look as if the geyser is exploding in both directions and in perfect symmetry. “North & South Windows” uses the landscape-oriented postcard and positions it in portrait format, with two more of the same postcard rotated once, and the third rotated back to the original orientation in a descending totem-like composition to see the negative space as completely new shapes of repetition and pattern. The rectangle of blue sky flips from left to right to left again. The darker, shadowy edge of redrock in the foreground touches its matching counterpart in the kissing, rotated neighbor, creating an illusion that these three cards are seamlessly one.

“Jenny Lake” takes two of the same postcard, rotating them only once so the horizon line matches up perfectly to create almost an hourglass, figure-eight, yin-and-yang symmetry between the two. The darker line of deeper water in the distance is lined up on both postcards, although the alignment slightly offsets the corners, creating a sense of tranquility and alignment, like that of sacred geometry or the golden ratio found in nature. Simple, yet divinely perfect.

Ostermann’s compositions also breach chaos with their mirroring effect. In  “Tetons,” four of the same postcard form an empty rectangle at their conjoinment, flipping and rotating the image of the Teton front to align the mountain lines and horizon lines to create a continuous, flipping scape. Or in “Molan Rock,” the wonky rock shapes rotated and reflected on a diagonal seem straight out of a kaleidoscope, the shapes of the landforms fantastical and extraterrestrial, re-seeing what makes Utah so famous in new perspective.

Ostermann also places different postcards in conversation with one another in a single composition. In “Wilson & Druid Arches,” the two postcards are turned from their landscape position to portrait, with their two desert foregrounds kissing to blur the idea of foreground in either. Simarily, in “Mexican Hat, Druid Arch,” the foreground blends from one to the other, with very little distinction where one ends and the other starts.

The postcards have the vintage patina of age weathered in their color. Although vibrant still, they have the coloration that attests to the older technologies that captured these images, perhaps back in the 1950s. (In “Yellow Car,” we see a vintage yellow and white station wagon that looks straight out of Mad Men.) The corners of some of the cards show the nature of their ephemera, slightly bent and white against the bright blue skies of the desert or Tetons. What racks did these cards sit in, in what town in the Southwest? And how long ago?

Ostermann uses collage as the foundation for reimagining images, allowing us to think beyond what we are seeing in front of us—to see the throughlines between images, without having to cut anything to alter our ways of seeing; to see the potential of images in conversation, finding the lines that connect across landscapes; to find symmetry and reflection, as well the spontaneity of the play between images. Ultimately, these works are satisfying in their simple gestures of alignment—echoing the harmony nature imparts to the soul.

Ways of Seeing, Marmalade Branch of Salt Lake Public Library, Salt Lake City, through April 3. 

Genevieve Vahl

Genevieve Vahl is a writer, farmer and artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her writing focuses on how art and community intersect, how to bring access to food and covering climate solutions around the Salt Lake Valley. She also writes poetry, binds artist books, makes paper and runs cyanotype prints from film.