Elizabeth Cope May, Eocene Photographer

In 1996, Elizabeth May, with her two sons, moved to the small town of Republic, Washington. She joined her husband, John May, a geologist, who had migrated to Republic the year before to accept a job with the Echo Bay Mining Company.  While living in Republic, May indulged her quietly growing passion for fossil hunting in Ferry County’s rich Eocene fossil beds.

Moon Tree by Elizabeth Cope May

Though May was initially attracted to the perfectly formed 50-million-year-old impressions of leaves and flowers that she unearthed at the Stonerose Interpretative Center’s public fossil site, she soon found her interest turning to the detritus of other fossil hunters’ searches. There, in piles of broken shale, she “…found beautiful rocks that people were walking on…” containing bits of plant fossil and colorful discolorations that were the result of chemical and mineral reactions. Intrigued by the small images she was finding, she quickly expanded her fossil search beyond Stonerose’s publicly owned fossil beds to privately owned sites, where May says she began “…building a library of images for the Eocene Series…a collection of rocks with abstracts, and oriental and celestial images.”

“There, in piles of broken shale, she “…found beautiful rocks that people were walking on…”

Before long, she was digitally reproducing, enlarging, and transforming two- by three-inch rocks and fossils into vivid, eye-popping images that range in size from four by five postcards to three-foot canvases.

Super Landscape by Elizabeth Cope May

After viewing her evocative, dreamlike interpretations of geology, May is often asked if she enhances her images before printing them. “I don’t even wash them. I dust them off if they need it and then just work with what the earth shows me.” She limits herself to cropping and positioning, which she accomplishes through the use of software graphics tools like CorelDraw.

“I think of my images as prototypic-petroglyphs,” she says describing a wonderful rock image that reminds her of the horse petroglyphs found in the Chauvet Cave in France. “I know my eyes are projecting [the image],” she says, “but something is also there to project.

May inherited a very good eye for art. Her father was Gordon Nicholson Cope, a major artist of the Great Depression, whose impressionist oil paintings now sell on Sotheby’s. She says he continued painting until six months before his death at 93. He painted “essence and light” she says of her father’s work, and though she readily admits she “can’t draw worth a hoot” she believes she inherited her father’s eye for light and composition. “The rock in Republic opened a new perspective for me. ”

Born in San Francisco, California, May attended university in Berkley, California, then joined the Peace Corp and worked in the South Pacific. Her eclectic resume includes working as a cadet and teacher on a three-masted sailing ship based out of Bergen, Norway; taking the teacher’s course with Outward Bound in Colorado; and working in special education in the Washington schools. She has shown and sold her work at The Met Gallery in Spokane, Washington; at the Naples Gallery in Idaho; in Napa Valley, California; in Lahina, Maui; at the Stonerose Interpretive Center in Republic, Washington; and in Grand Forks’ B.C. shops. May’s work includes her Eocene imagery, a series of geologic-based art that she calls “The Mandala;” and Reflections, which includes the beautiful and ethereal colors and textures found in the waters of Coal Harbour, B.C. and the lakes of the Pacific Northwest.

Purchase Information

Her work is available now on Etsy.com as affordable, mix-and-match prints that are meant to be purchased individually or as collections. They are framed to allow for grouping of images according to season, color, texture, subject, or personal predilection.

Cubical Arts – Purchase Elizabeth Cope May’s framed photo prints.

Acknowledgements

Ferrycounty.com wishes to thank Elizabeth May for providing us with photos of her art. Original article by Sarah Lawrence, first published on December 14, 2003. Article updated on December 27, 2011 to include new collection and purchase information.