Enter artist Jonathan Sadler

Written By Rachel Reichert

Echo Lake, California sits 7,414 feet above sea level, which is nearly 6,797 feet higher than our studio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Jonathan Sadler is a photographer whose work, for the last decade or more, has focused on the thoughtful and slow documentation of his family’s cabin in Echo Lake, California. Year after year, he has remained sharply focused on the cabins, boats, landscapes, and every small detail in between. The handmade interiors. The repairs made with what was available at the time. The age. The patina. The choices, some made out of necessity, some made with fierce intention. The changing landscape. And, moments of connection in this isolated place.

This ongoing and ever-unfolding commitment to creative practice is also a beautiful portrait of a place that has held and shaped Jon’s approach to making over his lifetime. The sensory experience of being in a place at a specific moment in time is felt in each of his images. You can almost smell the dry crisp air filled with pine and dust which seems to sit quietly in the background of  so much of his work. They are both documentation and a singular point of view. This is Jon’s world, and Jon is bringing us along into spaces that many of us dream about but may never have the chance to visit. They bring a longing and a counterbalance to our busy lives because these images are nothing but slowed down, both in the material nature of his practice, shooting primarily with film, and in the subject matter.

As part of a series of collaborations, Fool’s Gold tagged along (well, actually the Good Set tagged along) on his latest stay in Echo Lake. He generously placed the set into the landscape, sitting on top of peeling (yet perfectly matched) painted wood buildings, boats, tabletops, and the shoreline of the lake itself. In some moments, Sadler captures small conversations between two objects: a boat turned on its side with a fork, spoon and knife balanced in its grooves, or a granite stone and our flatware resting on its surface in the summer sun, almost as if these two vastly different objects belong together. Perhaps together in contrast or in their likeness. In other, more intimate images, Jon moves into interior space, placing the Good Set on tabletops in a more traditional format: flatware set next to a dinner plate, a shot just before humans enter the room.

Jon’s work moves fluidly between spaces occupied by humans and spaces that have been edited by humans yet are void of the human figure. People, their choices and interventions, the objects they cherish, and the passage of time all surface across his body of work in direct and indirect ways. At the same time, the work celebrates the singularity of a place and the people that place has held over time, while also serving as a record of how one artist experiences one place over a lifetime.

We are eternally grateful that Jon brought us along into this world, and for this beautiful series of photographs that offers a new point of view on something we cherish deeply: the making, material process, and connection that the Fool’s Gold studio allows us to continue to nurture.

Find Jonathan Sadler’s work in the In Praise of Small Things We All See and in the Fool’s Gold V1 Reader.

Please visit Jonathan Sadler online at: https://www.jonathancsadler.com/

Rachel Reichert
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