ARCHER, RYUJIE, SACABO Press Release

VERVE Gallery of Photography Presents

LAURIE ARCHER
RYUIJIE
JOSÉPHINE SACABO

Opening Reception: Friday, September 16, 2011, 5-7pm
Exhibition is on view Friday, September 9 - through Saturday, October 29, 2011

Conversations with the artists: Saturday, September 17, 2011, 2pm
Location: VERVE Gallery of Photography

VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present an exhibition of three gallery artists working in visual poetic interpretations in three different black and white photographic mediums. Santa Fean, Laurie Archer, will present her new solar plate etchings combined with the sewing of thread into the paper inspired by a William Stafford poem, The Way It Is. Ryuijie, from Monterey, California, will present Poems in Platinum and Silver, contemplative and serene platinum palladium and gelatin silver prints. New Orleans artist, Joséphine Sacabo, will be exhibiting photogravures from Óyeme con los Ojos, a new series inspired by the life and work of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a 17th century Mexican nun, who was one of the greatest poets and intellectuals of the American continent.

The public reception for this exhibition takes place on Friday, September 16, 2011 from 5-7pm. There will be a conversation with all three artists at VERVE Gallery on Saturday, September 17 beginning at 2pm.

The exhibition is on view from Friday, September 9, 2011 through Saturday, October 29, 2011.

LAURIE ARCHER

In Ms. Archer’s second VERVE gallery exhibition she debuts her latest body of work entitled, There’s a thread you follow…, the opening line from William Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is.” In this new work she makes use of the solar plate etching process and combines the meticulous and careful placement of thread into the paper. The series is then divided into three sub-sections, giving the images their individual titles; AT THE RIVER; ON THE ROAD; and, IN THE WOOD.

The "thread" metaphorically and physically follows the line where water meets a bank, a weed, a rock - either at the river, on the road, or in wood. Archer explains, “It follows the line of the road I walk every morning, where I pick up detritus that transformed and became an etching…the pieces of wood in my house that have the most exquisite calligraphy under the bark, thanks to beetle larva.”

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
- William Stafford

Does the poet suggest that the thread can be time - the one thread that follows everyone, everywhere - no matter what may change? For the artist, it is the thread that connects all of her artistic work such as how she learned to sew on an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine, and has been sewing ever since. The treadle sewing machine led to weaving on a four-harness loom for eighteen years. That led to using the resulting weavings over a wooden frame to make freestanding sculptures.

Now, Archer is aware that the thread throughout her life has been the arts. She has been an artist in one form or another since childhood working in the performing arts, book arts, and the visual arts, including the past few years working with solar plate etchings. She was graduated in 1959 with a BFA in Fine Arts from the Colorado College. She is the recipient of two major awards including the Fulbright for Dance & Art in Peru (1958) and the John Hay Whitney Fellowship in NYC to continue her studies in Theater, Acting and Dancing (1959). She was in the original cast of Camelot on Broadway in 1960. In addition, Archer has shown her visual work in New Mexico including the Palace of the Governors, Stables Gallery in Taos as well as exhibiting at the Gran Palais in Paris, the El Paso Fine Arts Museum in Texas, and the Taller Boricua Gallery in New York City.

RYUIJIE

Poems in Platinum and Silver, are serene poetic moments in time, images from two bodies of work – Ice Forms in gelatin silver and P2 in platinum palladium. Ice Forms are photographs of botanicals specimens frozen in blocks of ice. The ice acts as a filter for viewing these abstract yet familiar and sensual flower forms. In recent years the artist’s approach for the Ice Forms has been to photograph them in the Spring and then spend the rest of the year printing in the darkroom.

“Like most of my photography projects this one started with the thought: “what would happen if”… I couldn’t have predicted that the ice would become as important as the flower it encased. Each block was filled with bubbles and fractures, and the glow of light through the frozen water was magic. Discovering the always new combinations of textured ice, translucent petals and twisting stems continues to be one of my favorite preoccupations.”

P2 was titled for the square format of the artist’s platinum prints. This series includes landscapes, nudes, and abstract forms with the common theme----- the quiet and contemplative moment. The resulting photographs are small square 5x5” prints that allows the viewer to get up close and see every detail that the photographer intended.

While the subject matter remains the same as in the artist’s earlier work, the process itself is a hybridized approach to traditional photography.

“These photographs have echoes of my earliest work. Those first images taken in the mid 1970’s with a 4x5 camera; they depicted landscapes, plants, nudes and abstractions, and were printed in the best traditions of classic black and white photography [through gelatin silver prints]. The P2 photographs begin as 2 ¼ film negatives, but from there, everything changes. The film is scanned, adjustments are made in Photoshop, a digital negative is made and then it is printed in the darkroom as a platinum palladium print.”

Ryuijie was born in Otaru Japan in 1950. He moved with his family to the US as a young child. Over the years, Ryuijie has lived in many places. It was in Monterey that an exhibit of Jerry Uelsmann’s Photographs inspired him and propelled him to do fine art black and white photography. Ryuijie has pursued his photographic vision for twenty-eight years, and during that time has acquired a reputation for exquisite platinum-palladium prints. His work has appeared in View Camera, Photovision, Camera and Darkroom, Black & White and Lenswork. He has published three books, Ryuijie: Photographs, Time and Place, and Fragments of Time. Works by Ryuijie can be found in collections worldwide.

JOSÉPHINE SACABO

Joséphine Sacabo will be exhibiting new work entitled, Óyeme con los Ojos [Hear Me With Your Eyes], inspired by the life and work of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a 17th century Mexican nun who was one of the greatest poets and intellectuals of the American continent. Sor Juana lived in Mexico City in the late 1600’s and was very active in defending women’s rights in Mexico through her writing and poetry which centered on freedom.

“She created the most renowned salon of her time from behind the bars of her cloistered cell. And in that cell she studied science and philosophy, wrote poems, plays and music, and championed women’s right to intellectual and spiritual freedom. In the end, after resisting valiantly for over twenty years, she was silenced by the Inquisition. It is my hope that these images will help break that silence so that we may once again “hear her with our eyes”. This work is dedicated to women everywhere who, whatever their confines, prevail. They are our hope.”

Joséphine Sacabo lives and works mostly in New Orleans, where she has been strongly influenced by the unique ambience of the city. She is a native of Laredo, Texas, and was educated at Bard College, New York. Before mobbing to New Orleans, she lived and worked extensively in France and England. Her earlier work was in the photo-journalistic tradition, influenced by Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. She now works in a very subjective, introspective style. She uses poetry as the genesis of her work and lists poets as her most important influences, among them Rilke, Baudelaire, Pedro Salinas, Vincente Huiobro, and Juan Rulfo, Mallarmé, and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Sacabo, has published four books of her work including "Une Femme Habitée" in Paris in 1991 by Editions Marval; award winning "Pedro Paramo" in 2002 by the University of Texas Press; "Cante Jondo" in 2002 and “Duino Elegie” in 2005 both by 21st Publishing. Sacabo has had solo shows in Paris, London, Madrid, Toulouse, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities. Her work has also been widely published in magazines in the United States and Europe and is in numerous Museum collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Museum of Modern Art - N.Y.; The Smithsonian - Washington D.C.; The Library of Congress; among many others. Joséphine Sacabo has taught at a number of highly acclaimed workshops: the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles - France and at the Santa Fe Workshops.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
(low resolution images viewable in attached pdf)

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR LAURIE ARCHER
Email: archerlaurie@gmail.com
Phone: 505-982-0894

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR RYUIJIE
Email: ryuijie@sbcglobal.net
Phone: 831-277-0045

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR JOSÉPHINE SACABO
Email: josephinesacabo@gmail.com
Phone: 504-352-9101

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

See images and exhibition info on our Website here.