Do Process Show Announcement

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VERVE Gallery of Photography Presents

DO PROCESS – A group exhibition showcasing artists who utilize various techniques in their art-making process

Brigitte Carnochan, Cy DeCosse, Joy Goldkind, Jennifer Schlesinger, Caitlyn Soldan, Henrieke Strecker, Maggie Taylor, Kamil Vojnar

Opening Reception: Friday, February 24, 2012, 5-7pm
Exhibition is on view through Saturday, April 14, 2012

Conversations with the artists: Saturday, February 25, 2012, 12:00pm
Location: VERVE Gallery of Photography

VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present Do Process, a group exhibition of work by eight VERVE Gallery artists. In this exhibition, each artist utilizes his or her own special technique to produce photographic based artworks. Some of the images in the exhibition are made using contemporary processes, while others use alternative processes. Still others are made using both modern digital tools and old proven techniques. These techniques are characterized as “alternative processes” to distinguish the final print from the more ubiquitous gelatin silver print or contemporary digital print. The work in this exhibition ranges from 19th century print making practices, such as, hand-painted Gelatin Silver prints, Gum Dichromate, Bromoil, Mordançage, Photogravure and Albumen printing to more modern digitally composed and mixed media Photomontage prints. The exhibition showcases the history of some of the photographic techniques used over the last three centuries. In order to perfect and master these techniques, each of the artists demonstrates the virtues of perseverance and a passion and dedication to the photographic medium. Moreover, each artist has been open to hours of experimentation, and each is receptive to innovation. This exhibition is a celebration of 21st century approaches to 19th and 20th century photographic processes. All the work in the exhibition was produced especially for this show. The artists will share their formulas and techniques with us on Saturday.

The public reception for this exhibition takes place on Friday, February 24, 2012 from 5 to 7pm. There will be a conversation with the artists at VERVE Gallery on Saturday, February 25 beginning at 12:00pm.

The exhibition is on view through Saturday, April 14, 2012.

BRIGITTE CARNOCHAN
Brigitte Carnochan will be exhibiting hand-painted silver gelatin prints of nudes and still lifes. Brigitte begins her process by using a medium or large format camera to produce negatives rich with information. She then makes a black and white silver gelatin print with a matte finish. Finally, she judiciously and artistically applies oil paints onto the dried print. Some of her nudes take an hour to paint, whereas some of the still lifes can take up to as much as six hours to finish. Because each print is hand painted, no two of Brigitte’s hand-painted photographs in any edition are identical.

Hand-coloring photographs, manually adding color to a black and white print, is almost as old as photography itself. The announcement of the invention of the Daguerreotype in 1830 was accompanied by an almost apologetic disappointment that there was an absence of color on the print. Daguerre and his successors tried assiduously to find a way to fix an image with the “colors of nature,” but without success. As early as 1841, a few of Fox Talbot’s assistants were experimenting by applying watercolor, oils, pastels, dyes, or color pencils to the matte-surface paper of calotypes. Quickly, hand-colored pictures became the norm for those wishing to have their photographic portraits ‘touched up.’ This hand-coloring craft took great skill and because of demand, many portrait painters of the time turned to becoming photographic print hand-colorists. You probably have photographs of your ancestors from the early part of the 20th century that are hand colored.

Brigitte Carnochan’s hand-painted gelatin silver photographs are represented in museum, corporate and private collections. Modernbook Editions published Carnochan’s hand-painted images, Bella Figura: Painted Photographs, in 2006. A limited edition monograph, The Shining Path, was also published in 2006 by 21st Publications. Carnochan was named a Hasselblad Master Photographer for 2003 and her work has been recently featured on covers of Camera Arts and Silvershotz and in Color, Lenswork, Zoom, View Camera, Polaroid, Black and White, and Studija magazines. Three catalogs of her previous work have been published. She teaches photography classes at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program.

CY DECOSSE
Cy DeCosse will be exhibiting still life platinum palladium and gum dichromate prints. In 2001, Cy DeCosse, with Keith Taylor as printer, began the revival of the gum dichromate technique. In 1858, John Pouncy, in England, made the first color gum dichromate images. This process is capable of rendering painterly images with broad tones and little resolution of detail from photographic negatives using light sensitive dichromates and color pigments. Traditionally, this is a multi-layered printing process that makes full-color images; however, the prints can also be made from any one single color.

Photographers began experimenting with Platinum in Germany in the 1830s. With a platinum print, the light sensitive Platinum emulsion that makes the image is actually imbedded, soaked into the paper, not on the paper’s surface, as is the case with gelatin silver prints. The imbedded Platinum inks give the platinum print a sensation of depth and dimension. Platinum printing is a unique, hand-made process. The photographer formulates the emulsion of Platinum and Palladium for each print so as to produce the desired effect---a brown black, a rich warmer effect than the black blacks in a silver gelatin print. Papers, often hand-made, are coated with the Platinum emulsion by hand. Weather conditions, heat, humidity all affect the finished product. Thus, no two Platinum Palladium prints are ever identical.

DeCosse’s work is in numerous public collections including the England Royal Trust and the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. His work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad. There are four books containing Cy’s work. The first is a limited edition book published by The Journal of Contemporary Photography: Volume IV, entitled: Gardens of DeCosse (2000). The book is devoted exclusively to the work of the artist. The images in the book range from the quiet morning’s light falling on freshly picked vegetables to the riotous energy of flowers in full bloom. The second is a catalog for an exhibition held at the Accademia Delle Arti Del Disegno Firenze, Italy in October, 2001, entitled: Cy DeCosse: Play of the Light (2001). His third book is entitled Flowers and Food (2009) and it contains DeCosse’s botanical photographs in Gum Dichromate & Platinum. Florence by Cy DeCosse (2009) is a book of portraits that Cy dedicates to his muse, the city of Florence and its people.

JOY GOLDKIND
Joy Goldkind’s Bromoil prints in this exhibition are images from her Adagio series. The images are abstractions of dancers created by a double exposure and slow shutter speed so as to deliberately capture the blur of moving figures. The silver gelatin prints are then converted using Joy’s Bromoil technique. She also has her new work in this exhibition where she uses mirrors so as to create images that distort the human figure. Once again, Joy uses the Bromoil process to alter the traditional photograph and thus create a “unique painterly print.”

As the digital world advances and film options decline, Joy finds it necessary to combine the earlier photographic processes with modern world technologies. She creates her negatives using a digital camera and a computer. She then makes prints using a traditional darkroom to create a typical silver gelatin print that she then converts to a Bromoil print. The Bromoil process was introduced in 1907 by E.J. Wall and eventually replaced the Gum Dichromate process. Once an enlargement is made on silver gelatin bromide paper, it is then bleached in a solution of potassium bichromate to remove the black silver image on the print. Then using special brushes, Joy applies the greasy inks to pigment the gelatin surface of the print.

Joy Goldkind currently resides in St. James, NY. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC in 1963. She has exhibited in numerous venues across the country and internationally including a solo exhibition at the Museo Nationale Della Fotographia in Italy, which now holds a permanent collection of her work. Joy’s photographs have graced the covers of international publications and magazines such as Silver Shotz and Eyemazing. Her work has also been featured in B&W Magazine, Photolife, Zoom Magazine, Color and View Camera Magazine.

JENNIFER SCHLESINGER
Jennifer Schlesinger has spent the past year exploring and perfecting the hand-coated Albumen Paper process. Jennifer’s work in this exhibition is from her new series, Here nor There. Her inspiration comes from observing her young daughter’s innocence and imagination. Jennifer’s images are metaphors for capturing the initial magical and mysterious moments of inspiration. The artist believes that when adults learn to harness our youthful imagination, then we bring forth innovation and progress to the larger world around us.

The recipe for Albumen prints is simple, using everyday egg whites—“Break the eggs into a cup, carefully avoiding the mixture of yolk with the whites….”. Albumen is the sticky substance of egg whites and is the emulsion that is used to coat the paper. Albumen is the perfect process for Jennifer’s Here not There body of work. Albumen combines magical and scientific elements to produce a photographic image and is a perfect example of progress through invention. It is difficult to imagine the moment of inspiration where one of the greatest advancements in photography took place. Chicken yard egg white emulsion with table salt and silver nitrate bound the photographic chemicals to the paper effectively and cheaply. It was the first commercial process for producing multiple high quality photographic prints from a single negative. It leveled the photography playing field for the first time. It meant the medium was available for anyone to use; anyone could be a photographer. Moreover, it meant that pictures (portraits) were, for the first time, available to persons of ordinary means. Most of the photographs made in the 19th century were Albumen Prints. It remained the most viable and popular printing process for about 40 years. Albumen-coated paper was replaced by silver gelatin paper at the beginning of the 20th century.

Jennifer Schlesinger graduated from the College of Santa Fe in 1998 with a B.A. in Photography and Journalism. Her work has been published online and in print in publications such as Black and White Magazine U.S and UK, Diffusion Magazine and many others. Schlesinger is represented in public collections, including the Huntington Botanical Art Collections (CA), The New Mexico Museum of Art and the New Mexico History Museum / Palace of the Governors Photo Archives. She has received several honors in recognition of her work including a Golden Light Award in Landscape Photography from the Maine Photographic Workshops in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Center for Contemporary Arts Photography Auction Award. Schlesinger is co-founder of finitefoto.com, a new media collective that investigates and promotes the intersection of photography and culture in the State of New Mexico.

CAITLYN SOLDAN
Caitlyn Soldan is VERVE Gallery’s Featured Online Artist, a category of gallery representation that debuts emerging artists. VERVE offers emerging artists an online show of their work and framed images in the gallery for the duration of the underlying exhibition. Caitlyn Soldan’s work is a series entitled Thin Veils, using the Mordançage process. In the work, she takes self-portraits using a pinhole camera. Caitlyn takes her cues from Victorian spirit photography - portraits with spirits. Thus, the images in this exhibition are Caitlyn’s visual improvisations of ghosts, spirits, and hauntings. Caitlyn’s work is ethereal, esoteric, and allegorical.

Mordançage is a 20th century process created by Jean-Pierre, which is based on a 19th century process known as bleach-etch. Bleach-etch is a reversal process for film negatives. The process involves stripping away the darkest parts of the emulsion of a silver gelatin print. This image transformation creates a relief, or a raised area on the print. Water is used to float the delicate silver emulsion on the image so as to rearrange it and dry it back down onto the print. The end result is a one-of-a-kind and thus unique photographic image. The artist chose the Mordançage process for this series because it enhances the themes of time, decay, and mortality in her work. The process also gives the images mysterious and otherworldly qualities, separating them from reality.

Caitlyn Soldan was born in 1988 in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in June 2011 with a BFA in Photography. Her work explores themes of history, memory and time. Caitlyn prefers working with film and alternative processes but also enjoys exploring the possibilities of combining historical processes with new technology. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and France. Caitlyn presently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

HENRIEKE STRECKER
Henrieke Strecker, new to VERVE as a represented artist, will be exhibiting Photogravures on handmade paper as well as the Chine-collé process. Strecker’s images are of abstract yet familiar forms. She creates her imagery using plants, trees, and landscapes, as well as animal and human figures; the beauty that is her own backyard. Her hand-pulled original prints do not capture “an isolated moment or paint a realistic picture like a report.” Rather, she gives “an account of small movements and atmospheres”, and shares with us what she has experienced within that time.

Photogravures were invented in 1870s. A copper plate is coated with a light sensitive gelatin. The coated copper plate is then put in contact with a positive photographic transparency and exposed to light. The plate is washed to remove unexposed gelatin leaving a hardened gelatin negative. The hardened gelatin negative that remains on the plate is then inked. The inked etched copper plate is printed in the same way as an etching in a copper plate printing press.

Chine-collé is a special printmaking technique that allows an artist to use very delicate paper or linen that allows finer detail to be pulled off the coated copper plate. The finer detailed paper or linen with the image is then transferred or bonded to another surface, a heavier support not unlike a matte, to which the finer paper or linen is attached. This technique allows the artist to print on a much more delicate surface and also to provide a background color behind the image that is different from the surrounding backing matte.

Henrieke Strecker was born in Freiburg, Germany. She spent her formative years at the foot of the Black Forest of southwestern Germany. In 2008, she immigrated to the United States. She currently lives and works in the White Mountains of New Hampshire where she is surrounded by abundant wildlife and flora. She teaches photography at Plymouth State University. Strecker has an extensive exhibition history showing her work in Europe and more recently in the United States. She lectures and gives workshops in addition to teaching photography courses at Plymouth State.

MAGGIE TAYLOR
Maggie Taylor will be exhibiting her most recent work of surrealistic digital montages. Maggie continues the use of animals, people and landscapes placed in the surreal, bizarre photo stages she creates.

Since 1997, Maggie Taylor has created surrealistic imagery using computers, flatbed scanners and small digital cameras. She sees the scanner as a type of light-sensitive device, not much different than a digital camera. In both instances the scanner and camera capture a slice of time. In addition to placing small objects directly on the scanner, the artist also scans daguerreotypes and tintypes that she collects in antique shops and purchases online. The subjects in her images become the cast of characters that shape the artist’s pictorial stage. Once Maggie has finished her creations, she prints them in her studio on an inkjet printer. As is the case with all her creative work, Maggie runs through many test prints, image revisions and adjustments before getting the results she wants.

Maggie Taylor received her BA degree in Philosophy from Yale University in 1983. Maggie’s MFA degree in Photography is from the University of Florida. In 1996, after more than ten years as a still life photographer, she began using the computer for image creations. Her work is featured in Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, published by Adobe Press in 2004; Solutions Beginning with A, Modernbook Editions, Palo Alto, 2007; and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Modernbook Editions, Palo Alto, 2008. Taylor’s has had one-person exhibitions throughout the U.S and abroad. Maggie’s work can be found in numerous public and private collections including The Art Museum, Princeton University; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; and The Museum of Photography, Seoul, Korea. In 1996 and 2001, she received State of Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowships. In 2004, she won the Santa Fe Center for Photography’s Project Competition; in 2005, Maggie received the Ultimate Eye Foundation Grant. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

KAMIL VOJNAR
Kamil Vojnar will be exhibiting new work in mixed media, Photomontages on paper and canvas from his ongoing series, Flying Blind. Kamil Vojnar’s work focuses on the contradictory world in which we live, metaphorically focusing on the place where beauty and suffering meet. The artist mixes elements from dreams in his work and lets intuition and the materials he uses to guide him to his final image. The artist often revisits his images repeatedly to place them in different contexts, creating variations of one image several times.

Vojnar’s unique approach to his work layers images from many different photographs and textures. Sometimes his work is layered on canvas creating one-of-a-kind pieces, and other times he layers on fine art paper, creating a small edition. In both instances he varnishes with oil and wax, sometimes painting on further with oil paints.

Kamil Vojnar was born in Czechoslovakia in 1962. He studied at the School of Graphic Arts in Prague and began his career as a Graphic Designer. He left the country illegally (it was still Communist at the time), and moved to Vienna. Kamil eventually became a US citizen. Kamil finished his studies at the Art Institute of Philadelphia. He continued his career in graphic design, which later led to illustration and imagery based photography as he working for book and music publishing houses in New York City. At the same time, he continued to create his own imagery. After meeting his partner and having children, going back and forth between France and New York, they settled in France where he had an Atelier that carried his own work. He and his family moved to Los Angeles, CA in 2011. Kamil has received numerous awards including being the recipient of the Jacob Riis Award in 2010.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Contact Information for VERVE Gallery
219 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Email: director@vervegallery.com
Phone: 505-982-5009 Fax: 505-982-9111

Michael Crouser on NPR

Check out this awesome article on VERVE artist Michael Crouser from NPR titled:
The Art of Finding a Photographic Voice.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/01/13/144928895/the-art-of-finding-a-photographic-voice

PHOTO ARCHIVES EXHIBITION

Download this press release complete with images on our website, here.

VERVE Gallery of Photography Presents

PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS/
NEW MEXICO HISTORY MUSEUM
PHOTO ARCHIVES FUNDRAISER

With

Herbert A. Lotz
Jane Phillips
David Robin
Genevieve Russell

Opening Reception: Friday, January 20, 2012, 5-7pm
Exhibition is on view through Saturday, February 18, 2012

VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present a very special exhibition to raise funds in support the Photo Archives of the Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum. VERVE Gallery and the New Mexico photographers in this exhibition recognize the importance of the Photo Archives and the archive’s need for funds to support its mission: the preservation of a unique collection of over 800,000 items of the region’s photographic history. The photographic collection at the Photo Archives “focuses on the history and people of New Mexico and the expansion of the West; anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology of Hispanic and Native American cultures.” The Archives is open to the public and has a searchable online database of images available in its digitized collections. VERVE’s and the photographers’ goal in this exhibition is to raise $10,000 in support of the Photo Archives.

Four local Santa Fe artists have been invited to participate: Herbert A. Lotz, Jane Phillips, David Robin, and Genevieve Russell. Each photographer has offered portrait sessions to local individuals or families for a direct tax-deductible contribution to the Photo Archives. In addition to portrait commissions, each artist was invited to exhibit their own work. The work will be available for sale. All proceeds from the sale of their artwork will be divided equally between the photographers and the Photo Archives.

The public reception for this exhibition takes place on Friday, January 20, 2012 from 5 to 7pm at Verve Gallery of Photography, 219 East Marcy Street.

Parking is available across the street, courtesy of First Citizens Bank, formerly IronStone Bank.

The exhibition is on view through Saturday, February 18, 2012.

HERBERT A. LOTZ

Herbert A. Lotz has been a respected photographer in the Santa Fe community for over 40 years. Herb is a commercial photographer, making portraits and photographing the works of local artists. Lotz’s portrait commissions in support of this fundraiser include that of Ana Pacheco, founder and publisher of La Herencia magazine from 1994-2009. In 2004 Pacheco was the recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Award for outstanding women of New Mexico. Herb Lotz will be exhibiting his own work. That work consists of Santa Fe luminaries such as Fine Art for Children and Teens’ founder Juliet Myers, Ceramic artist and author Rick Dillingham, and gallerist James Kelly.

Herbert Lotz was born in Illinois in 1944. He was raised in a small farming community south of Chicago. He was given his first camera, a Kodak Brownie, at the age of six and the photographs that he took foretold his future. He was accepted and entered The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in a joint degree program with the University of Chicago to study painting. However, after enrolling in a survey course in photography Herb changed his major to photography. In 1967, while working and attending school, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was trained as a radio/teletype operator. Thereafter, he was sent to the war in South Viet Nam. Herb was detached from his signal corps. unit and assigned to the 25th Infantry Brigade at Cu Chi in the so-called Iron Triangle. While there, in his off duty time, he photographed life at the base camp. When he finished his tour in the Army in 1969, Herb moved to New Mexico to start a new life.

JANE PHILLIPS

Jane Phillips has more than twenty years of experience as a photojournalist. For the past sixteen years she has been a staff photographer at the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. For this exhibition, Jane’s portraits include local artists, Nance & Ramon Jose Lopez; County Clerk, Valerie Espinoza; New Mexican farmer, Matt Romero; and, Acequia Madre Elementary student, Rebeccah Lucy Peshlakai. Her personal work in the exhibition are selected images that reflect pivotal moments in her career: images, such as, a ten-year-old boy taking a cigarette break at a county fair in southern New Mexico to spending time with the peoples of Africa.

Jane Phillips earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she was born and raised. Her work experience includes New York Newsday, New York Times, New York Post, UPI and both the Maine and Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Throughout her career she has traveled extensively and photographed a wide range of people from the anonymous to the world- renowned. She’s captured, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Edward Kennedy Robert Redford, Juan Hamilton, Sam Shepard, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gladys Night, Ray Charles, among many others. Chosen from more than 1100 entries worldwide, her photograph, “Cigarette Break” garnered first prize in the Santa Fe Center for Photography, Singular Image Color Category in 2005. She was a finalist for the prestigious New Mexico Arts Tamarind Institute grant, 2010.

DAVID ROBIN

David Robin began his career as a chief fashion photographer for a major national retailer where David honed the skills necessary to become a professional commercial photographer. David Robin will be exhibiting his personal work from the series the Les Rêves Des Rois / Dreams of the Kings, images taken at the Palace of Versailles and the châteaux of the Loire. This collection of images was created by David as evidence of the aesthetic dreams and visions of Françoise I and Louis XIV (The Sun King) of France. The body of work speaks to their indelible impact on our collective visual conscience.

After college, David apprenticed for some of the world’s leading photographers. Early in his career he served as a master printer for the likes of Irving Penn and others. David is now known for his mastery of the black and white silver print. David Robin’s commercial work can be seen in everything from CD packaging, advertising campaigns, editorial spreads and book covers to fine art galleries and installations. He has received numerous professional awards for his commercial work for such clients as Levi Strauss, The Gap, Blue Note Records, Sony, BMG Records and Norwegian Cruise Lines. David also pursues self-directed projects that reflect his personal vision. His work has been exhibited in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Four years ago David Robin traded the sounds of Manhattan, his home for the last ten years, for the quiet beauty of Northern New Mexico.

GENEVIEVE RUSSELL

Genevieve Russell’s work as a photographer and as a visual storyteller is grounded in community documentary projects that seek to highlight people making a difference. She works to call out not the crisis, but the compassion, beauty, imagination, and possibility of people, places and things. Russell’s portrait commissions include photographing the owners of VERVE Gallery, Jenna and Wilson Scanlan, and their children. In addition to being active in the arts, the Scanlans are committed to education, immigrant rights, and social justice. Russell has also photographed Wendy Borger and Halid Hatic, owners of Spandarama Yoga Studio and Rasa Juice Bar / Ayurveda and Juliana and Daniel Coles, both community organizers, and their children. Russell’s personal work in the exhibition includes work from a trip the artist made with the Bali Art Project, an organization that gives Santa Fe area High School juniors the opportunity to travel and experience a culture different from their own by traveling to Bali. The work in this series is titled, An Offering, that the artist describes as “…simple pictures; daily meditations found along the path. Each image is a personal memento, a message, an offering…”

Originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, Genevieve Russell has lived and worked in Santa Fe for over eleven years. She founded StoryPortrait Media to create short films and multimedia pieces that educate, engage, empower and inspire. StoryPortrait Media collaborates creatively with non-profits, small businesses and artists committed to making a positive impact, both socially and environmentally. She has taught at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, the College of Santa Fe, and the Santa Fe Community College. She currently serves as the photographer for Santa Fe Living Treasures and is on the Kitchen Cabinet of the Santa Fe Time Bank. She has two feature length documentary film projects underway, The Bali Art Project and In Search of Home.

PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS PHOTO ARCHIVES

The Palace of the Governors was originally constructed in the early 17th century. It served as Spain's seat of government for what is today the American Southwest. The Palace of the Governors chronicles the history of Santa Fe, as well as New Mexico and the region. This adobe structure, now the state's history museum, was designated a Registered National Historic Landmark in 1960 and an American Treasure in 1999.

The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives contains an estimated 800,000 items including historic photographic prints, cased photographs, glass plate negatives, film negatives, stereographs, photo postcards, panoramas, color transparencies, and lantern slides. This important collection includes material of regional and national significance, dating from approximately 1850 to the present, covering subject matter that focuses on the history and people of New Mexico and the expansion of the West; anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology of Hispanic and Native American cultures; and smaller collections documenting Europe, Latin America, the Far East, Oceana, and the Middle East.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST AND LOW RES JPGS AVAILABLE WITHIN ATTACHED PDF

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Jennifer Schlesinger, Director
219 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Email: jennifer@vervegallery.com
Phone: 505-982-5009 Fax: 505-982-9111
vervegallery.com (or join us on Facebook!)


CONTACT INFORMATION FOR THE ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION
HERBERT LOTZ Email: herbo@zianet.com
JANE PHILLIPS Email: janephillips123@comcast.net
DAVID ROBIN Email: david@davidrobin.com
GENEVIEVE RUSSELL Email: genevieve@storyportraitmedia.com

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR THE PHOTO ARCHIVES OF THE
PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS/NEW MEXICO HISTORY MUSEUM
KATE NELSON Phone: 505- 476-1141; Email: kate.nelson@state.nm.us

Tony O'Brien: Light in the Desert

Show includes Tony O'Brien and his new book. (Also includes work by Verve Artist Janet Russek and other local artists.)

(Text taken from The Museum of NM.)
Oct 23, 2011 through Dec 31, 2012
10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Contemplative Landscape
New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors

After covering the lives of drug addicts and prostitutes in America and the struggle of Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets – including a stint as a prisoner of war – Santa Fe-based photojournalist Tony O’Brien turned to Christ in the Desert Monastery in Abiquiu, N.M., to restore his spirit. During the year he spent living with the Benedictine monks, they allowed him to document their daily activities and rituals, both contemplative and secular.

O’Brien’s work from that era now forms the heart of a new exhibition at the New Mexico History Museum, Contemplative Landscape, Oct. 23, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2012, exploring how photographers see the state’s meditative topography: the land, art, architecture, and people who build and populate the sacred.

Download high-resolution images from the exhibit by clicking on "Go to related images" at the bottom of this page.

Drawing on the extensive holdings of the Photo Archives, with the participation of contemporary photographers, Contemplative Landscape’s black-and-white photographs explore the emotional and ceremonial practices of people as varied as Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Sikhs, to name just a few of the diverse faith-based communities who call New Mexico home.

Throughout our time, creativity and spirituality have blended in ways as monumental and communal as the world’s great cathedrals and as small and personal as a roadside descanso marking another person’s passage from the earth.

“The idea is to think about the spiritual, however it manifests for the viewer personally,” said Mary Anne Redding, curator of the Photo Archives. “What is considered sacred or contemplative varies. What these places have in common is that they draw people to them either in the built or natural environment. Each is infused with an energy that collects over time as people come together or seek enlightenment. New Mexico encompasses and encourages radically different religious practices. Each of these communities adds a different perspective to the meaning of religion and contributes their practices to the diversity of spiritual belief.”

Contemplative Landscape shares its space and spirit with Illuminating the Word: Saint John’s Bible (Oct. 23, 2011, through April 7, 2012) in the museum’s second-floor Albert and Ethel Herzstein Gallery. As part of the exhibition design, visitors will be invited to enter a contemplative area to pray, meditate or simply sit in silence – opportunities too often lacking in the 21st-century world.

In addition to O’Brien, photographers represented in the exhibit include:

Wyatt Davis

Tyler Dingee

Ferenz Fedor

Miguel Gandert

Laura Gilpin

Kirk Gittings

Cary Herz

Debora Hunter

William Henry Jackson

Ernest Knee

Paul Logsdon

Elliott McDowell

Teresa Neptune

Jesse L. Nusbaum

T. Harmon Parkhurst

Edward Ranney

David Robin

Janet Russek

Sharon Stewart

Don J. Usner

Adam Clark Vroman

Nancy Hunter Warren

George Ben Wittick

The photographers have used their work to explore and renew their faith, even challenge their own and others’ beliefs. The result is an exhibit that marries an adobe morada abandoned by the Penitentes to processions of robe-clad monks carrying out the Stations of the Cross in desert canyons. For so many of these photographers, their images illuminate their personal quests.

Award-winning photographer Cary Herz, who died in 2008, was working on a project in the Las Vegas, N.M., Jewish Cemetery in 1985 when someone told her of other Jews in New Mexico – people who had practiced their faith in secret. As Herz began investigating, she found slides of grave markers that appeared to contain Jewish symbols, a discovery that led her to cover 10,000 miles documenting the lives of people in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona, the descendents of a secret history that has its roots in the Spanish and Portugese Inquisitions.

Another example is photographer Kirk Gittings, who was hired by New Mexico magazine to photograph the rapidly deteriorating historic churches of northern New Mexico. Through that work, he and writer Michael Miller won a National Endowment for the Arts grant that for four years allowed Gittings to immerse himself in Catholic spirituality. Given the keys to a church to photograph at his leisure, he would sit in the pews, breathe the scent of candlewax and reconnect with the saints. A few years later, he converted to Catholicism.

Of his own work, Edward Ranney says: “The petroglyphs associated with the ancient Pueblo sites in New Mexico's Galisteo Basin give us an entry to the imaginative and religious world-view of these early Pueblo people. In addition, as Lucy Lippard has observed, they `focus space,’ and make visible the Pueblo people's concerns and beliefs, and their relationship with their gods.”

And, says Teresa Neptune: “My camera serves as a tool for my own awareness; with it I challenge myself to constantly pay more attention and see the world in a more creative way. Every landscape, every street has the potential to be seen contemplatively. What a joy to share and celebrate this way of seeing in "Contemplative Landscape."

The Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors recently acquired 20 of O’Brien’s images from his Monastery of Christ in the Desert portfolio. O’Brien’s experiences in the monastery are the subject of his new book with writer Christopher Merrill, Light in the Desert: Photographs from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert (Museum of New Mexico Press), debuting with the exhibition.

A New York City native, O’Brien began his photography career in 1973 at the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Santa Fe Reporter and the Albuquerque Journal North. His work has appeared in national and international publications, including Life magazine, Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He has also worked with the Ford Foundation on a land-use project on Zuni Pueblo, as well as a water-works project in the colonias along the Texas border for the Pew Foundation.

Among the places that have exhibited his work: the Museum of Our National Heritage, Massachusetts; the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida; the Adham Center of Photography, Cairo, Egypt; The Newseum in New York and the Sag Harbor Picture Gallery. In 1990, O’Brien was awarded the first Eliot Porter Foundation Grant for his work in Afghanistan. He has taught documentary photography and was director of the Documentary Studies Program at the Santa University of Art and Design (formerly the College of Santa Fe), where he is on the faculty at the Narion Center of Photographic Arts.

In 1989, while on assignment for Life magazine, he was taken prisoner in Afghanistan for six weeks, an experience that led to his 1994-95 sojourn at Christ in the Desert as a practicing member of the contemplative community.

“You sit in that chapel and the light dances throughout the day,” O’Brien said. “It can go from just plain to pure beauty. I began to look at things a little differently. I began to be more aware of what it was that I was looking at and really taking my time. And the willingness to let things go.”

Founded in the town of Abiquiu in 1964, the Monastery of Christ in the Desert follows the Benedictine life with no external apostolates. It maintains a guesthouse for private retreats where men and women can share the Divine Office and Mass in the Abbey Church with the monks. Set in the Chama Canyon, about 75 miles north of Santa Fe, the monastery is surrounded by miles of wilderness, assuring solitude and quiet.

Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape are generously supported by the New Mexico Humanities Council, the Scanlan Family Foundation, and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.

Lectures, workshops and performances for Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape will be held in the History Museum Auditorium and are free with admission unless otherwise noted. The schedule:

Sunday, October 23, 2011, 2-4 pm

Opening reception in the museum’s second-floor Gathering Space. At 2 pm, join photographer Tony O’Brien and writer Christopher Merrill (Light in the Desert: Photographs from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, MNM Press, 2011) for a lecture and book signing in the auditorium.

Sunday, November 6, 2 pm

“Lay Folk and the Psalms,” lecture by Carol Neel, medieval historian at Colorado College.

Monday, November 7, 6 pm, The Lensic Performing Arts Center

“Donald Jackson: Illuminating the Word,” a special evening with the lead artist and calligrapher of The Saint John’s Bible. $15. Private reception following, $50. Tickets at www.ticketssantafe.org, or call (505) 982-1234.

Friday, November 18, 6 pm

“Calligraphic Trails,” lecture by artist and calligrapher Patricia R. Musick.

Saturday, November 19, 10 am-4 pm, NMHM Classroom

“Irish Manuscript Bookhand,” calligraphy workshop with Patricia R. Musick. Cost is $80. Limited seating; call (505) 476-5096 to register.

Sunday, December 4, 2 pm

Sacred choral music by Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe and the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery.

Sunday, January 22, 2012, 2 pm

“On the Weight of Words,” lecture by renowned artists Barry Moser and John Benson.

Saturday, February 25, 10 am-4 pm, NMHM Classroom

“Oh My Gouache,” calligraphy workshop by Dianne Von Arx, special treatment artist for The Saint John’s Bible. Cost is $100. Limited seating; call (505) 476-5096 to register.

Sunday, February 26, 2 pm

“Special Treatment Illuminations for The Saint John’s Bible,” lecture by Dianne Von Arx.

Sunday, March 25, 2 pm

“Endangered Texts: Preserving Ancient Books the Benedictine Way in the 21st Century,” lecture by Father Columba Stewart, executive director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at St. John’s University in Minnesota.

Sunday, April 29, 2 pm

Contemplative Landscape photographers panel discussion; Kirk Gittings, Ed Ranney, Janet Russek, Sharon Stewart and Don Usner.

Friday, June 1, 6 pm

“Fragile Faith,” lecture by Contemplative Landscape photographer David Robin.

Friday, June 8, 6 pm

“Landscape and Memory,” lecture by artist and calligrapher Laurie Doctor.

Saturday and Sunday, June 9 & 10, 10 am-4 pm, NMHM Classroom

“Landscape and Lettering: Before the Separation of Drawing and Writing,” calligraphy workshop with Laurie Doctor. Cost is $200. Limited seating; call (505) 476-5096 to register.

Friday, July 13, 6 pm

“Poetry & Photographs,” discussion and poetry reading with Contemplative Landscape photographer Teresa Neptune and poet Miriam Sagan.

Sunday, October 14, 2 pm

“Ritualized Naming of the Landscape through Photography,” lecture by John Carter, photography curator at the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Sunday, November 4, 2 pm

Red as a Lotus: Letters to a Dead Trappist, poetry reading by Lisa Gill; and Compassion Rising, a film about Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama.

Sunday, December 2, 2 pm

Sacred choral music by Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe and the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery.

Charbonneau/French & Jennifer Hudson Show Press Release

(Click on the artists' names to see their work.)

VERVE Gallery of Photography Presents

CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH
&
JENNIFER HUDSON

Opening Reception: Friday, November 4, 2011, 5-7pm
Exhibition is on view through Saturday, December 31, 2011

Conversations with the artists: Saturday, November 5, 2011, 2pm
Location: VERVE Gallery of Photography

VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present an exhibition with three artists, the collaborative team of Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French (known simply as Charbonneau / French) and artist Jennifer B. Hudson. These artists work narratively, using stories and ideas that play out visually in their staged imagery. Jennifer B. Hudson’s small prints will grace the walls of the smaller and more intimate room in the gallery and Charbonneau/French’s large scale work will be exhibited in the main gallery space.

The public reception for this exhibition takes place on Friday, November 4, 2011 from 5 to 7pm. There will be a conversation with the artists at VERVE Gallery on Saturday, November 5 beginning at 2pm.

The exhibition is on view through Saturday, December 31, 2011.

CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH

The collaborative team Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French (Charbonneau / French) debut their first exhibition at VERVE Gallery with 21 large-scale photographs from both their Massillon and Playground series. Their work has been appropriately described as images with Victorian-era aesthetics and a 19th century craftsmanship. They produce their work by combining traditional black and white darkroom techniques with contemporary photographic processes.

The Massillon series takes its name from the Ohio town where Eliza French’s great-grandmother, Zeta Eliza Woolley, lived at the turn of the 20th century. Massillon reads as an unraveling narrative inspired by the artist’s memories, old family folklore, dreams and childhood reminiscence. These recollections are transformed into works that have been described as “stills, it would seem, [from] an Edgar Allan Poe film adaptation by Ingmar Bergman.” While the work is distinctively inspired by French’s ancestry, the artists say the work, “…is a meditation on memory, and how it functions through the two of us, and between us.”

The series Playground focuses on the study of primary shapes, and their literal and symbolic relationships to human subjects and the natural world. Eliza French notes of the work:

In these highly designed pictures we have strayed away from the emotionally driven narrative that characterized our previous series, Massillon, to create visual poetry through experiments with proportion, distance, and repetition in space.

With the Playground series, Charbonneau and French have ventured into such realms of influence as classic mythology, Buckminster Fuller’s utopian communities, mid-twentieth century architectural sketches, Dava Sobel’s book, Planets, and their own childhood experiences with weather balloons. Each photograph in Playground begins with the artists’ sculptural intervention into a found landscape or surface through the decisive placement of people and objects, including large monochromatic spheres and diminutive and fanciful female figures. The images conclude with performances, postures and arrangements captured on film that are often infused with elements of classical mythology and subtle references to the universe as created and manipulated by gods and goddesses of polytheistic times.

All of the work by Charbonneau and French is rendered via meticulously executed installation, staging and equally exacting post-production work. The artists utilize traditional darkroom techniques and shoot their scenes with film in medium and large format cameras. Jeff Charbonneau explains:

Our images are essentially staged performance/installation stills, as we are very interested in capturing a real moment in time and adhering to the sentiments of traditional film based photography. As such, we prefer manipulating our images in a wet darkroom environment, rather than in the digital domain. In our Massillon series, where clouds are upside-down, or superimposed over a figure, the manipulations were done strictly in the darkroom using multiple negatives. In Playground we only retouched minor areas where the large orbs were tethered to the ground with small weights.”

Charbonneau and French do, however, rely on digital technologies for the enlargement and printing process of their images. In the interest of maintaining consistency throughout their editions, large-scale exhibition prints are created using digital Chromogenic print technology based on their original silver gelatin masters.

Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French have been working together since 2004, when a mutual interest in the photographic medium brought them together. Their performance-based images are created through a partnership from conception to completion. Charbonneau/French’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in shows and art fairs since 2006, as well as featured in such international publications as Photograph Magazine, American Photo, and Photo +.

Jeff Charbonneau is a masterful printer working in traditional black and white darkroom technique. He attended the University of Wisconsin and UCLA for graduate studies where he studied music, anthropology and photography. He has divided his time between the motion picture and television industry and photography for twenty years. Eliza French studied screenwriting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and earned a degree in Art History from UCLA in 2001. In 2008, she became a full-time artist in collaboration with Charbonneau after working for several years in the entertainment and arts industries.

Both artists live and work in Los Angeles.

JENNIFER B. HUDSON

Jennifer B. Hudson’s exhibition consists of three bodies of work. All of Jennifer’s images find their inspiration in spirituality, in religious symbolism, the anguish in life’s transitory nature, and empathy in personal relationships. She is a dynamic and emotional illustrator who uses forgotten or discarded mechanical devices in staging her scenes. Hudson’s images are both artistically stylized and meticulously crafted into intimately small-scale prints.

Jennifer’s series Baptism is a personal exploration of a young woman's journey through life’s altering experiences to a spiritual reawakening. We follow the empowered woman’s heartfelt journey from guilt and transgression, temptation and despair, to prayer, commitment, reconciliation, and grace. This work illustrates adversity, agony and triumph; the mysteries of human religiosity. Jennifer’s Flora series, a work in progress, combines human forms to create floral arrangements of the more common spiritual icons.

Medic is a snapshot of physically or spiritually ill humans and their relationships with themselves and others in times of need----- the images are metaphors exploring introspection, empathy and compassion. Jennifer Hudson explains:

The work began wholly on one sentence whispered by my husband while we endured a deeply unsettling time together. He held my hand, lay close to me and said softly, "I just wish I could take the pain from your body, and put it into mine." I have been fortunate to know incredible love all my life, but at that moment I became suddenly and intensely aware of the magnificent power that exists between people who care for one another. When I was anxious and fighting to fall asleep each night, I began to invent miracle machines; contraptions that heal, deliver hope, legacy, remedy, and redemption. Each image from Medic is a thoughtful invention, strange and tender, revealing facets of the delicate human heart…. In the making of this work, I sought to begin to understand some of the most rare and beautiful relationships in the world, to expose their most frail, vulnerable moments, times of great intensity, and most cherished inner workings.

In the ten isolated chamber scenes in the Medic body of work we are invited to witness emotional experiences, exchanges, and confrontations brought on by life’s transitory nature. In some chambers, we are invited to experience life-changing moments for persons with humbling choices. In other chambers, we see exchanges of affection, tenderness, connection, mercy and empathy. However, each chamber metaphorically explores the challenges to both individuals and human relationships during serious illness and their fantasizing for a “miracle machine, a contraption that heals”.

In spite of having been raised in a religious and conservative home in rural Texas, Jennifer Hudson grew up imaginative, curious, introspective and experimental. She uses her formative experiences to bring insight and awareness to her intensely personal artwork. Hudson is currently working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is an MFA Degree candidate at the University of New Mexico, in the Studio Art Photography Program. In addition to private portraiture commissions, she is an international speaker and lecturer sought out year after year by many professional public and private photographic organizations. Jennifer’s work has been a part of many exhibitions, and is represented by three major galleries across the country.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST


CONTACT INFORMATION FOR JEFF CHARBONNEAU AND ELIZA FRENCH
Email: contact@sevensistersasleep.com
Phone: 310-397-7936

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR JENNIFER B. HUDSON
Email: oliveavonlea@yahoo.com
Phone: 617-697-4544

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Jennifer Schlesinger, Director
219 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Email: director@vervegallery.com
Phone: 505-982-5009 Fax: 505-982-9111

Check out our current exhibition or our other artists at our website!