Beaver Lodge — platinum-palladium print on Simili Japon
The exhibition Many Waters: A Minnesota Biennial, postponed because of the pandemic, will finally open this summer in St. Paul and have an opening reception. The show has been organised by The Minnesota Museum of American Art (The M) and will use the museum’s window galleries and its partnership with the NewStudio Gallery to exhibit work, as The M is currently closed for construction. I have three photographs in the exhibition that have all been printed in platinum-palladium and will be in the NewStudio Gallery.
Minnesota Museum of American Art 350 Robert Street North St. Paul, MN 55101 www.mmaa.org
This summer’s been a pretty good one, but school’s started and it’s time for show and tell!
In July we flew back to London to see our daughter graduate from Central St Martins with a degree in Fashion Journalism, while at the same time our son and his girlfriend were heading in the opposite direction to Denver, CO, to start new jobs. So proud of them all!
Thanks for the photo, Jo!
For the three weeks that I was in the U.K., London was in the middle of a heatwave. I’m well old enough to remember the heatwave of ’76, which is the summer everyone compares hot weather to, but this was far hotter in my mind. Most days were in the mid-80s with a few in the low 90s. And remember, buses, tubes, houses and flats aren’t air-conditioned… But it was a good trip, seeing lots of friends, lots of museums and galleries and having so much fun staying with our daughter and her boyfriend in their new flat.
There were several outstanding photography shows — Vanessa Winship and Dorothea Lange, both at The Barbican, Tacita Dean’s Landscape at the Royal Academy and The Shape of Light at Tate Modern. A small show of work by C.R.W. Nevinson, Prints of War and Peace, at The British Museum commemorates his gift of 25 prints to the museum in 1918. They span his time in the trenches of Flanders as a war artist during World War I, as well as prints of New York, Paris and London.
C.R.W. Nevinson — Looking Through Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1921, Drypoint
Ed Ruscha — Parking Lot series
Alison Rossiter — Gevaert Gevaluxe Velours
After three weeks of family, friends, art and walking, all sustained by copious amounts of flat whites, I returned to Minneapolis and went straight into teaching a week-long polymergravure workshop at Highpoint Center for Printmaking. And if that wasn’t enough, the following week I was teaching Kerik Kouklis the process. Kerik travelled to Minneapolis from California especially for a one-day, one-on-one workshop, at the end of which he had made 3 perfect plates and about a dozen prints!
If you’re interested in learning the process, sign up for my infrequent email newsletter for details of upcoming workshops.
The photograph was made just outside of Saguaro National Park last September, at the end of the monsoon season, after a 104º degree day and just before the rain and flash floods hit the area.
Medium: Polymergravure Paper: Hahnemühle Copperplate Image size: 9.25″ x 4.50″ Paper size: 14″ x 11″ Edition: 20 + artist proofs
The Center for Fine Art Photography Fort Collins, CO Landscapes 2016
May 6th — June 11th, 2016 Reception: May 6th, 6 – 9pm
Last week I returned from a five day trip to Arizona for the opening of the Rfotofolio show Depth of Field. This was held at the beautiful non-profit photo-center Art Intersection, in Gilbert, AZ.
The show and the associated events were so well organised by Connie and Jerry of Rfotofolio and Alan Fitzgerald and his team at Art Intersection.
On the Friday evening there was a roundtable discussion between many of the photographers in the show, gallery directors and curators, around the theme of professional sustainability, moderated by Becky Senf of the Center for Creative Photography. Saturday evening was the opening which was great fun, but tiring. Lots of wonderful questions were asked of everyone’s work, and we got to meet old friends and new.
Photo by Rfotofolio.
Photo by Rfotofolio.
Jennifer Schlesinger and myself — Photo by Rfotofolio.
Impending Storm, Saguaro National Park.
Saguaro National Park
On Sunday I drove down to Saguaro National Park, near Tucson. After hiking halfway up a mountain trail in the heat, I decided that the thunderstorm I could see developing in the far distance was indeed getting closer. The lightning was the turning point for me. Within minutes of getting back to the car and driving I got caught up in a small dust storm but then the torrential rain started. After making it back slowly to Gilbert via flooded roads and slow moving freeways, I was ready to meet up with the others for a drink and dinner. We made it into the restaurant just as the rain and wind started again. Monsoon season in Arizona.
Dust storm, near Saguaro National Park.
Dust storm, near Saguaro National Park.
Rain storm, Saguaro National Park.
Center for Creative Photography
On the Monday a small group of us drove down to the Center for Creative Photography, in Tucson. We met with an assistant curator, Andrew Kensett, and Jennifer Jae Gutierrez, a conservator at the center, to look at about 40 prints – iconic images of photography – that had been pulled from the archives.
In no preferential order there were prints by Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Ruth Bernard, André Kertész, Margrethe Mather and Sonya Noskowiak.
Seeing these prints, unglazed and in some cases with the mat lifted to reveal the entire print and its support, and under nice soft lighting, was amazing. Two prints stood out for me that I hadn’t expected to. One by Edward Weston, Contraband Bayou, Louisiana, 1941 and the other by Brett Weston, Cities Service Refinery, 1956. Both these prints I had seen before, but only in books. The print by Edward Weston has so much depth and detail that is lost in books and the refinery image by Brett is so luminous and metallic. Spectacular. And the intimate Harry Callahan prints, Eleanor, Chicago, 1949 and Cattails Against Sky, 1948 renewed my love for his work.
The one print that did disappoint (can I even say that about one of the masters?) was Aaron Siskind’s Jerome, Arizona 21, 1949. At just over 18″ x 13″, it was the largest print there and much softer, greyer and flatter than I would have imagined it to be. Exactly the reverse experience of the Weston’s.
The Center for Creative Photography print room. Yes, I did ask permission to take photographs!
For anyone working with alternative/historical processes, there’s a call for work at Brass and Bellows. The show, an Alternative, is juried by Cy DeCosse and the deadline is February 4th, 2013 with the chosen works being exhibited from April 1st through May 3rd, 2013.
Brass and Bellows, 101, Judd Street, (#4), Marine on St. Croix, MN 554047.
