Still Time on Pye Pond

Still Time on Pye Pond makes an artful plea for tearing down color barriers in love and marriage. Wistful or wishful, the text sets the stage for vibrant encaustic art to portray the remnants of a segregated past. The images open on a bucolic scene and slowly focus on discarded fragments of life on an old southern farm, invaded by nature and ravaged by time. The combination of image and language brings a vigor to the story that surpasses what might be achieved with only one medium. In its colorful format, in its poignant subject matter, in its deeply rooted yet radiant geography, the Still Time on Pye Pond story is sure to resonate deeply at home in the South, and also more widely where southern realities are mirrored.

“There is something vital in this conversation between image and story of the past—which is not the past at all, which is lived out any time Fontaine walks on Pye Pond. What is there about a belief that is more important than a granddaughter? Where words fail us, maybe these images can tell the story.”
—Jim Grimsley, author of How I Shed My Skin

“Still Time on Pye Pond is haunting and memorable. I want to look again at the images and let them wallow in my mind.”
—Leo Twiggs, South Carolina Hall of Fame artist and Verner Award recipient

“Still Time on Pye Pond by artist Danielle Fontaine, is much more than a collection of published images by the Canadian born artist. It is a narrative related to Grandpa, Grandma, Marie, Ryan, and the artist’s own relationship to place and memory. The memoir chronicles Fontaine’s realization of family in the deep south and social change confronting outdated and dying tradition. This family story wanders far beyond the gallery. Fontaine’s images capture a sense of loss on levels that are more than representational, and in fact timely.”

—Tom Stanley, Artist, Verner Award recipient

“Danielle Fontaine’s Still Time on Pye Pond joins together vividly rendered images with a plaintive narrative. Through its thoughtful sequence of encaustic work, this collection fuses the artist’s numerous gifts within the brilliant medium of remembrance and longing.”

—Jon Pineda, author of Let’s No One Get Hurt