VoxPhotographs Weblog

Here are some happenings that will really perk up your February – don’t miss any of them:

University of Maine Museum of Art – Dog Run: Michael Crouser – on view through March 3.

Bowdoin College Museum of Art – The Fixed Image: History and Process in American Photography – on view through March 3.

PhoPa Gallery – BAD ASS – Photographs by Melonie Bennett – on view through March 30. Opening Reception, February 14, 5 p.m. Artist talk: Sunday, March 17, 2 p.m.

Maine Museum of Photographic Arts – Terrain Vague (Part I): 1998-2010. Photographs by Gary M. Green, University of Southern Maine, Glickman Family Library. Through May 3, 2013. Opening Reception, February 7, 5-7 p.m. Artist talk: March 15, 2-3:30.

And to while away a few hours in a highly productive way – connect with Jim Nickelson’s latest blog posting for a list of  Calls for Entries! Get the word out about your work!

If there’s anything else going on that I’m not aware of, please make me aware!

There’s a clever show opening 12/7 at Addison Woolley featuring work by Dave Wade and Alan Sockloff.

Desert Island©Dave Wade. All Rights Reserved

Dave Wade has installed two huge, beautiful prints unframed for you to stick your nose right into, along with a very generous selection of small images simply framed in black. Anyone who knows Dave knows he’s got a good sense of humor and you’ll see that clearly in many of these images. Yes, he enjoyed creating these photographs, there’s no doubt about it. So take advantage of this opportunity to see some skillful objects portraits by an old pro and you’ll also have a good time appreciating his content, composition and lighting choices. Dave’s work is also represented at VoxPhotographs.

The other side of the Addison-Woolley gallery features a very successful body of work by Alan Sockloff who has chosen to render these still lifes entirely via the cyanotype process. With the terrific impact and success of digital darkroom for any artists, it’s interesting to see many also including historic processes in their oeuvre. These floral still lifes are simply lovely, and also are the result of excellent content and composition decisions-making.

Aging Alone©Alan Sockloff. All Rights Reserved

“Something Old, Something New” opens Dec. 7 with a reception for the artists and continues through to Dec. 29, 2012.

Speaking of “something new”  – I believe change is afoot for this gallery space for 2013, so stay tuned.

If you want to mess with your head a bit, attend the opening on Friday, November 2, 5-8 of “Relevant Histories” up at Addison Woolley gallery on Washington St. in Portland.

Devoured (platinum metals and gum bichromate), 2012©Brenton Hamilton. All Rights Reserved

 
This show of Brenton Hamilton’s wonderful and weird works is a beauty, as co-curated by Bruce Brown and Jon Edwards, and the 22 works on display cover about 8 years worth of fearless mixing and matching of historic process picture-making: from cyanotypes to platinum with black gum bichromate to salted paper toned with gold, and everything in between…

Brenton teaches at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport and makes most of his works in the summer months, partnering with the sun. He loves gum bichromate washes, and I can just picture him, in another time, sitting on a stone bench under a tree on a summer day conversing eagerly with Edward Steichen, a master at using similar techniques to define his pictures.

The reason this will be a fun evening, along with Brenton’s talk about this show on Sunday, November 11, at 2, is you can  try and pry the meanings of these works out of him. You’ll want to try, just because he so stubborn about giving that information up. They are eerie, honestly, for the most part. They are not random montages of this, that and the other. Brenton clearly has a train of thought about life that I’ve never experienced, and this is one time when I wish the artist would explain every piece in the show! Generally, I hate written explanations of visual art (what’s the point?), but in this case I sure would like to know the intricate references to mythology, history and the bizarre so I could get beyond the immediate impact of the images and their processes, to the next level of understanding. Dreams? Favorite texts? Life experiences? It’s all there, I bet you, in the headless statues, one-eyed portraits, and fairly recently, the inclusion of…birds.

Untitled (platinum/palladium with gum washes)©Brenton Hamilton. All Rights Reserved

Bottom line is, Brenton calls himself an inventor. He also admits he is deeply interested in the surrealists, as well as how history and fable collide, and where all of that takes his head. So jump on the train with him and see where you end up.

Spend some time pondering these works – the processes as well as the meanings. See if you can connect with the inspirations behind them.  With a couple of glasses of wine at the opening, your insight may deepen. And a chat with Co-curator Bruce Brown is sure to provide enlightenment as well. However you approach it, it will mess with your head, guaranteed!

“Relevant Histories” opens November 2 and runs through December 1, 2012.

I attended the opening of the five artist exhibit of “Between Past and Present: The Homer Studio Photographic Project” at the Portland Museum of Art on October 5 (through February 17, 2013). The PMA has almost always got a significant photography exhibit going, and this one is a cool way to tie into the huge, international attention-getting Winslow Homer “Weatherbeaten” exhibit (through December 30, 2012). All of the photographers in “Between Past and Present” are adept at creating works using photographic processes that were prevalent during Homer’s time, often mixing the latest digital technology into the process. This exhibit is the current CIRCA exhibit at the Museum – exhibits that feature contemporary artists.

The Double Wave, 2012, Gum Bichromate print©Brenton Hamilton. All Rights Reserved

I take issue with how the exhibit is installed for a couple of reasons: depending on where you begin viewing the exhibition, Brenton Hamilton’s works are either invisible, or all you get as an introduction to it. If you take the elevator from the lobby/entrance of the Museum, you see nine of Brenton’s gum bichromate inspirations right off the bat. Of any of the bodies of work in the exhibit, Hamilton’s most closely tie in with the iconic paintings in the hugely successful Winslow Homer “Weatherbeaten” exhibit across the hall and so from that standpoint, it works. As you step out of the elevator on the 4th floor, there are two more Hamiltons once again introducing elevator-users to this exhibit.

If you enter the exhibit using the stairs up to the 4th floor you would never know Hamilton is even included. Not one of his works is visible. Several people have commented they couldn’t find his works in the exhibit or when they did, they are so darkly lit and in such narrow areas they can’t see them well. Having lived for 4 decades with an artist, I know how disappointing it can be for artists when they feel not as appreciated as others in a group show. While no curator is ever maliciously taking this approach to installing an exhibit, it happens a lot.

My second issue is that there are too many works by Alan Vlach and Tillman Crane so that the value of the sum total of their contributions is somewhat diluted in the repetition of subject and style. A tighter approach to curating these artists’ offerings would have allowed room in the main room of the 4th floor exhibit for some of Hamilton’s lively and unusual pieces and in so doing, contributed a much-needed aesthetic break from a long line of black and white works. An alternative would have been a mix of works in the downstairs elevator hall, allowing a more democratic showing of all five artists invited to participate. Too, a mix of works in that narrow hall would perhaps have offered a broader introduction to the five-person exhibit to snag the attention of diverse museum-goers.

Tent-Camera Image on Ground: View of the Sea from Winslow Homer’s Backyard, Prouts Neck, 2012©Abe Morell. Courtesy of the artist and Bonnie Benrubi Gallery, New York, NY. All Rights Reserved

The biggest name in the exhibit is Abelardo Morell, who gave a lively and well-received lecture on his work at the Museum’s Annual Photography Fund event on October 18. His tent-camera image is a mental puzzle that you either get right away or have to work at and then, hopefully, as it did for me, you have a visual epiphany and there it is: the view of the ocean from Homer’s studio, but superimposed on the grass of the back lawn. Morrel has been using camera obscura techniques for over 20 years, but came up with this tent-camera which allows him to take it all with him. At his lecture he showed us some breathtaking works taken of New York City’s bridges and skylines, many of them created in the same way as the Homer exhibit work, but instead of grass, showing the pebbly surface of the rooftop of the building he was working from.

 Lobster Pot, Cliff Walk, Scarborough, Maine, 2012, Platinum Print©Tillman Crane. All Rights Reserved

Tillman Crane introduces the exhibit if you enter from the stairway. His platinum prints are beautiful, while mostly documentary in approach. There are three exceptions in my mind – the lovely, pictorialist “Detail, Staircase, Homer Studio” and the visually arresting and unique “Roof Corner, Homer Studio.” His very lively “Lobster Pot, Cliff Walk, Scarborough, Maine” makes me wish he had taken more chances in his approach to this project.

  Cliff Walk near West Point, Salted Paper Print©Alan Vlach. All Rights Reserved

Alan Vlach’s salted paper prints are also beautifully made, and some of the works have been embellished digitally to connect more directly with Homer’s engravings (for Harper’s Weekly, for example). I would have preferred that this had not been done, frankly, and will leave it up to you to decide for yourself whether the approach makes the works seem tarted up and un-genuine or really contemporary and stylish. I love the “Day Marker, Ferry Beach, 2012″, and the “Two Chimneys in Silhouette” is a unique and welcome take on things. The quintet of “rocky shore” landscapes featured on the main wall of the exhibit could have been bettered served by a trio, as the brain tends to stop “seeing” when the visual stimuli is so similar from piece to piece. The “Cliff Walk, near West Point” is gorgeous and should have been the main squeeze here in my opinion. I wonder if it could have been printed larger as a salted paper print or if the artist is limited size-wise when using this technique. I’ve heard that the technique is not limited in size capability but it may have more to do with the digital negative.

Objects of Uncertain Provenance, 2012, 24 Wet-plate Collodion Tintypes, 8″x10″ each©Keliy Anderson-Staley. All Rights Reserved

We get a relief from all this similarly sized black and white somewhat when we turn and see the 24-piece tin-type installation by Keliy Anderson-Staley. She also has three black and white rocky shore prints scanned from original tintypes, but one of them is a welcome change in that it is taken from the rocks looking up at Homer’s studio. Anderson-Staley is a smart and fearless professional and it’s always a good feeling to welcome her back into the fold of Maine’s fine art photography community.

Lastly (or firstly, depending on how you approach things!) Brenton Hamilton’s gum bichromates comprise the most unique vision with respect to this project. No camera is used and digital montage is the foundation of most images. This was a way of making photographic works that was introduced in 1855 and was a huge hit with the turn-of-the-century pictorialists as well. Hamilton has mastered the technique, but his works are so modern in style, they exude tension and these are no exception. Actual imagery from Homer’s paintings are layered into the series, best evoking the power of the coast that so moved the painter. Hamilton uses red, purple, brown and black/gray tones through the series.

Falling Toward the Deep Sea—Homage to W.H., 2012, Gum Bichromate print©Brenton Hamilton. All Rights Reserved

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The Museum has done an interesting thing with respect to this exhibit: they are making available 100 portfolio sets of 5 digital reproductions – one from each exhibiting artist in “Between Past and Present”. These are all printed by Nickelson Editions  and the boxes are printed and constructed by David Wolfe of Wolfe Editions in Portland. They are available in the Museum Store and are $500.00.