10/20/2026
This gorgeous cyanotype print by Dora Somosi from the series ‘By Her Side’ (2022-ongoing) currently being framed by Andrew Berg to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of Lunata—tomorrow is the official day!
Somosi’s lens-based practice is rooted in slow processes, care for the natural world, and a commitment to honoring great creative legacies.
For the ongoing series ‘By Her Side’ Somosi is “visiting the homes/studios of departed female artists and thinkers whose practices are rooted in America, and whose work has been influential to her work, and that of so many. For this work, she creates a photographic blueprint of a tree that was witness, through its proximity, to the selected women’s legacy. The women all have deep relationships to the land. They use their expertise or pioneering spirit for education, inquiry, land conservation, preservation and/or appreciation. Visiting the sites is a performative act that calls upon innate photographic abilities to both connect and memorialize. This is a chosen history and a personal education.”
This print titled — Anna Halprin, Kentfield, CA, (Canyon Oak), 2025 — is a hand-printed 36 x 28 inch cyanotype on Arches watercolor paper from an edition of 5. Halprin was a prominent late 20th century choreographer based in Northern California who transformed dance into a profound tool for personal and community healing. She authored seminal texts on somatic movement, including Dance as a Healing Art and Moving Toward Life.
The branches of a Canyon Oak bend toward one another in a gentle way, crossing one another, leaves absorbing the sunlight, growing slowly decade by decade. The tree could live to be 300 years old. One of the more figurative works on view at Lunata, the trunks like the human body, rhyme with the crossing of one’s legs or arms, or the crossing of two bodies in motion. Halpein’s dance philosophy saw dance not as rigid technique, but as continuous motion, life itself, and a tool for healing, social change, and mind-body integration.
Thank you to Sarah Shepard and of course Dora Somosi for preparing this new addition to the Lunata office. We will share photos once framed and installed!
