NOT SO STILL LIFE

Time travelers don’t need maps. Intuition inevitably leads them through the portal, in and around those flashes of existing—of lives past, present, and contemporaneous. They intrepidly traverse the zigzagged line between perceived reality and dreams, peeling open parallel dimensions we don’t often see, revealing the multitudes contained both within the universe and themselves.

Multimedia artist Dominica Fisher, who describes herself as a creative explorer of “science fiction, magic, and all things not of this world,” has been contemplating the supernatural and unexplained wonders of life since she was a child. Through meditation, creative writing, and her art, she finds ways to make sense of the nonsensical—unlocking a door to personal discovery.

“Time is so weird. It’s not linear,” says Fisher, who lives in Lincoln Park with her husband, Joe, and their children, 14-year-old Joe and 11-year-old Nevada. “We are jumping through every single moment with a preconceived perception and your past experiences shape that reality.”

Those who have been lucky enough to see Fisher’s photographs and multimedia creations on exhibit at BIÂN in Chicago’s River North neighborhood understand the subtle and otherworldly nuances of her work.

One of those pieces, Mak(H)er, is the result of a downtown photo shoot for a client that inspired a series of wildly different images—each representing some aspect of this person’s self-perceived identity.

Fisher says the structure of modern reality is so rigid that it demands everyone to continually “be” one thing, a nearly impossible request. From this one shoot came a series of photographic works in hazy hues of pale pink, some more in focus than others, that represent a life that is anything but still.

“We got these images of her on her rooftop and then we went inside and I put up a backdrop. The difference between what we ended up shooting inside is dramatic. There is a range of a human being that is immense, and even though we grow up, our want to be all of the things doesn’t go away,” she explains. “To the outside world, I’m an artist, a meditation teacher, and a mom, in my mind … I’m a freaking scientist, an engineer, a rockstar, and 1,000 other things.”

Her Street Painting collection is a similar mix of what might appear to be traditional black-and-white photography of an urban scene, but Fisher literally flipped the camera lens for a fresh perspective. Using an inverted lens, Fisher shot the images as she walked south down Michigan Avenue.

“If you think about your eye, it’s convex. When light comes in you see a sharp image because your eye is rounded, and the light is bent into sharp focus behind it. Light is data, so when you flip the lens to concave, the data spreads and you see the moment before consolidation.”

Some of the shots in the Street Painting series capture that moment “right before perfection” where all the elements are sharper. “Because I’ve spread data out, you can see that moment in the in-between space,” Fisher observes.

Another one of her favorite recent projects, also on display at BIÂN, is a series of photographs titled Simply.

“I made these photographs by slowing the shutter speed,” she explains. “I allowed a lot of time to lapse and, that’s the play of light and being. You get to be 1,000 different little slivers of time at once.”

While Fisher boldly embraces her continuous investigation of multidimensional realms through her creative pursuits, she admits that being ultra-perceptive and keenly aware of life’s layers was harder to contemplate when she was younger.

“I always pause before I say this but, I’ve always had visions … always had these connections. As a child, I assumed that was a natural occurrence until I realized that it wasn’t … that’s when you get a reaction of ‘this little girl is crazy,’” she adds. “I tried very hard to shut it down because we have been taught, especially in this Western society, to shut these abilities down.”

Then, in her 20s, Fisher became an actress—finding an outlet for her creativity in Chicago theater. She studied acting at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and even founded her own small, black box theater company called the Sinnerman Ensemble. But ultimately, it was meditation and slowing down that allowed her to truly understand the otherwise unexplainable.

“With meditation, I saw myself jumping into a portal that looked like a puddle beside me,” she says. “I had a backpack on that encased all the information I needed to understand the moment I was jumping into. This is the sliver of time I capture, the jump through the portal.”

In the end, it’s been a gift, one that allows her to create art that invites curiosity and exploration.

“I don’t have a guide who I talk to. It’s just deep knowing, and the conversation is within such an old part of myself … for all of us, it’s within that part of ourselves who may have lived all of the lifetimes and who has no judgment on any of those lifetimes,” Fisher explains. “And because of that one realization, I started to play with the idea of the photograph.”

The camera, in her hands, functions as a time machine—catching that one moment right before it all coalesces into time, energy, space, and matter.

“It’s a great way for me to understand what’s happening,” she says. “These images are a way for me to dive in and be the explorer instead of being the witness.”

For more information, visit dominicafisher.com. You can also purchase pieces from her exhibit at BIÂN, a private social and wellness club at 600 West Chicago Avenue, Suite 001, in Chicago.