Counsel Langley grew up among shipwrights and foundry workers – people with strong traditional skills and respect for materials. Their influence played a large part in her choice to study metalsmithing at Massachusetts College of Art (Bachelor of Fine Art, 1999). The rigor of metalwork honed Langley’s discipline, steady hand, attention for detail, and love for surface treatment (rough, smooth, matte, shiny, sparkly, natural, mechanical etc.). Her work remains rooted in a metalsmith’s approach to making art.

Langley’s mixed media pieces have been widely exhibited; venues include the International Gallery of Contemporary Art (Anchorage, AK), Bear Gallery (Fairbanks, AK), and in the PNW the Museum of Northwest Art, Roq La Rue, PUB Gallery at Peninsula College, OGHE Ltd., and Bridge Productions. Her work was recently featured in Microsoft Surface Launch Campaign and is held by the Seattle City Light Portable Works Collections and Arts WA Public Collection. Langley’s work has been featured in Seattle Magazine, City Arts Magazine, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Trickhouse, Beautiful/Decay blog. Her Love for cross-discipline collaborations sparked opportunities to work with literary publications Filter Literary journal, Poetry Northwest Magazine, the creation of album art, scenic design, and illustration.

At the Edge of All We Have Built

This series is a celebration of those strange, and sometimes lonesome, folks that walk the boundaries. Visually, the series takes a cue from scenic turnouts—those delightful opportunities to pull off our highways, get out of the vehicle, and walk to the very edge of our infrastructure so that we may gaze at the sheer beauty of nature as it sprawls before us. What if we move off planet—why would we not still build those opportunities? A chance to view a particularly stunning nebulae, galaxies, birthplaces of stars. The characters here are mostly in a contemplative isolation, alone with the vista and their thoughts and questions. And, like the silhouettes common to folktale illustration, they are anonymous and therefore can be any of us, all of us.

I love to mix sci-fi, outer space, and big universals, right in with the humble, day-to-day, and personal—no less so with this series. It is about our end times, it is about where the sidewalk ends, the moment when we have built to the edge of our capacity. And, it is also simply the view a parent most frequently has, especially when your children are teenagers. You have built a family, you have helped children develop skills, morals, and a collection of experiences. You build all this together so that they take it to the very edge, say “What the heck is over there?” Off they go to find out. And, the hope is they are equipped to do so and return with new information gained.