Openings Connecting: June 2011

Thursday, June 9, 2011

IT HAPPENED: now showing in Ranchos de Taos

A FIRST: walking into a space and seeing work I'd done on the walls.

The precious little platinum images on vellum glowing in the corner from the gold leaf backing.

The long line of the silver gelatin prints.

Supportive friends.

Caterina Giglio and I have shared blogging for a couple of years and finally met...her work part of the show as well. . .and my good friend Renee, the most encouraging art pal ever...we've shared five summer workshops at Mabel's, Studio in the Sky with Sas Colby. . .and a blog.

The show is called Four Directions, Four Visions. Once, I was like a 'rolling stone' with 'no direction home'. Not so today as I am firmly rooted right here in Michigan. I am fortunate to have been able to share the Two Graces space for its last show at this site with owner Robert Cafazzo, Caterina Giglio, and Vicki VanAmeyden. . .
GRACE and GRATITUDE

MY 'STATEMENT'

for the show is at the top of my sidebar.

FOUR DIRECTIONS/FOUR VISIONS: Two Graces: First showing for me, JUNE 3, 2011

With no directions home, I found Taos in the late 60s. It felt like home immediately. It still does. I know this sentiment is familiar to countless others.

The mountain stopped me in my tracks, and I stayed for several years. Since that time, I circle back annually.

To me, that circle is symbolic of this body of work at Two Graces. This is a time in my life when I've been fortunate enough to experiment with art making. Not surprisingly, I found myself drawn back to the images in the Ektachrome slides that I'd taken in the early 80s of Chaco Canyon, the San Francisco de Asis Church, dusty roads, and the ever changing skies of Northern New Mexico. The spirit of this adobed land lingers in my core and manifests itself within these works.

This past Michigan winter was spent creating enlarged negatives from my thirty year old slides, pulling part of my past into the present via today's tools of scanner and computer. Using traditional silver-gelatin darkroom processes, these resurrected and modified negatives acquired a new life. The majority of these prints are the result of this mediated reincarnation.

The smaller images took me into photographic processes from the mid-1800s. These handmade platinum/palladium prints are created coating vellum, for translucency, with these metal salts and exposing them to ultraviolet light. They are then bathed in the alchemy of the darkroom. The tonal qualities are unique in each print. Finally, 24k gold is layered to the backs of the prints, emanating the warmth, glow, and depth of these beloved places.