We lost a dear friend and artist last week, Saturday, June 4, 2022. Fighting a battle with cancer, Jeffrey was still creating art, as seen in the attached, unnamed image.
His work has dealt with themes mostly on the darker side, including images challenging our fleeting happiness, facing our mortality, signs of missing people, Boystown, carnivals, bullfights, and the culture of transvestites in the 1970’s.
One of his favorite painters was James Ensor. Silverthorne's series, Christ's Entry into Southbend (1994-1996) was taken from Ensor's painting, Christ's Entry in to Brussels. The series was made while teaching in South Bend, Indiana
Jeffrey’s signature photograph, Woman Who Died in her Sleep, is one of beauty and the blackness of death. She is an enigma. Once you realize she is dead, the darkness consumes the viewer. Jeffrey’s fierce essay, Silent Fires, about Orpheus & Eurydice, possibly relates to a divorce. Visits to Boystown and the border reveal the underbelly of life that is just as honest as taking photographs of people at a carnival.
Jeffrey had an incredible intellect, we had great conversations. Often, he would respond with one sentence that bluntly revealed what we might have missed. Burt and Jeffrey, both with a sarcastic sense of humor, bantered many hours, all the while Jeffrey snapped his camera shutter.
Here is his artist statement for new work he sent in 2021. He would have one more year to live.
Keep Walking
My old age and amplified senses tell me that death is out looking for a date.
My mind and heart have become my telescope machine, focusing light for lookback time, finding my soul, where I was, and how I got to be here. Maybe with a mirror I can turn the light around and see into the future?
Eyes wide open and make quiet the light. These photographs come from the devotion to travel this land of oceans, hidden mountains and secret passages complete with waterfalls and mysterious pools, pine, bamboo, and plum trees to shade the sun and keep the mists.
Photographs do keep time, a good thing to do, and then the time goes away.
J. Silverthorne
June, 2021
Our condolences to Michele Provost.
Missy & Burt Finger
