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Exhibition Preview: Salt Lake
Alpine Art's 24 x 24
New Year's Day in photos
by Sue Martin
You can almost hear the “Mission Impossible” theme song in the background when you learn about the assignment proposed to 24 Utah photographers: Your mission, should you choose to accept it . . .
The letter from Alpine Art curator Matt Chiodo went to the 24 artists in mid-December, barely three weeks before the “mission.” Each photographer was invited to pick one of the first 24 hours in 2012 and chronicle that hour (local time, wherever they might be), using only available light, and submit only one photograph for exhibition. Additional parameters regarding the size of the photograph and framing were designed to ensure a cohesive exhibit. Alpine Art will show the resulting 24 photographs from February 17 to March 31, in an exhibit it calls 24 x 24.
The hours, from 12 a.m. to midnight on January 1, 2012, were assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.
Partying, or hung over (or not), someone had to take that first hour of 2012. Kelly Green picked it. She knew she’d be in Portland, at a club where her boyfriend would be playing bass in a band. “I went to the club earlier that day to check out the space and the lighting,” she says. Spying a balcony above and to the side of the stage area, she decided to begin photographing there, hoping to capture the band, the crowd, and a burst of exuberant celebration as the clock turned to 2012. She even handed out the New Year party “crackers” to the crowd. With camera anchored to her tripod and a railing, she was ready to shoot. “I was hoping there would be more of a New Year celebration happening, but there wasn’t,” says Green. The stuff spewing from the crackers just didn’t show well in the available light. But, Green says, “It was fun to play around with the colors, lights, and long exposures.” |0|
Anne Cummings-Anderson responded late to Chiodo's invitation. With few hours to choose from, she selected 11 p.m. “It was a little challenging and I didn’t have a lot of time to pre-visualize,” she says. “But I had been thinking for a while about hopes for the New Year, from a political point of view. So I took that as my concept and played with it.” She sketched out the composition she had in mind and scouted the location for the shoot. Even with all that preparation, there are usually unexpected challenges. Life isn’t perfect. But that was fine with Cummings-Anderson, who enjoys working with imperfection and not spending too much time over-shooting to perfect an image. After all, she says, “The message within my picture is about imperfection and the world we live in today.”
Gerry Johnson was packing for a holiday trip to Hawaii when he received his invitation to participate. He selected the hour between 6 and 7 a.m. The friend he was staying with on the Big Island is a former photojournalist who was excited to suggest places for the shoot and go along for the fun of it. They planned to travel to the island’s volcano park, but the weather turned rainy, so they went to the black sand beach instead. “It was absolutely fantastic,” says Johnson. “I love being up early in the morning. I thought it was a cool way to do things and to welcome the New Year.”|1|
While New Year’s day was winding down most people where probably heading to bed. But Shalee Cooper had a 9 p.m. photo shoot for the Alpine show. Cooper likes to document things; not just things, but color. “I decided to shoot in my living room with the play of light on the walls,” says Cooper. Her abstract color field photographs are well known; will this follow that concept? You’ll have to see the show to find out.
Michael Slade picked the evening hour from 6 to 7; not his first choice, but close. “It’s neat to see what you come up with when you’re not in control,” he says. He shot his photograph on the Great Salt Lake as part of his multi-year documentation of the lake at various times of the year. “I wanted to do something different,” says Slade. So he worked with a new direct-positive paper made in England. It’s a bit like a Polaroid in that the image is captured on the paper in his 8 x 10 inch view camera. But the image is then developed back in the studio. Since the assignment was to produce a 16 x 20, or 16 x 16, image, Slade shot a sequence of four 8 x 10s to assemble into the required size. “This is a little different from most photographs,” he says. “There’s no negative so this image cannot be reproduced.” It’s one of a kind. |2|
Cat Palmer, mother of two young children, one teething, is often up in the middle of the night, so why not take the 4 a.m. assignment, she thought. Her strategy was to explore her world, inside her toy-strewn house, to find her best option. What caught her sleep filled eyes after the alarm went off at 4:00 on New Year’s morning was the jack-in-the-box her little boy got for his birthday.
Palmer is excited to be among the participating artists, even though conforming to the framing guidelines for the show is contrary to her well-known style of mounting photographs on metal and incorporating mixed media in the presentation.|3|
In his invitation to the artists Chiodo said the concept behind this group show is to emphasize the variety in talent and styles among the artists and to highlight each artist with one focus. As the images came in, the concept was borne out in the variety of processes and subject matter as well as styles.
This is Chiodo's first curatorial project at Alpine. He says, “We’d like to move the gallery in a direction of having artists create art for the gallery instead of bringing in things they’ve shown other places. This will keep the gallery more relevant in the future.”
For one-of-a-kind, one-for-each-hour interpretations of January 1, 2012, don’t miss this show.
24 x 24 opens at Alpine Art in Salt Lake City on Friday, February 17, with a reception from 6 to 9 pm and continues through March 31.
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Hints 'n' Tips: Plein Air
Hold the White Stuff
Painting a Winter Scene
by John Hughes
Like water, snow has an immediate appeal factor, conjuring up feelings of peace, awe, and fun -- think Christmas, Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and winter sports like skiing, sledding and skating. And with natural design elements of light and dark, snow scenes make good painting subjects. Having grown up in the Northeast, I have always been attracted to paintings with the fluffy stuff as an element of design, whether a complete blanketing of snow or patchy areas that create interesting patterns.
When painting snow the beginner will usually go directly for the white paint, which, artistically speaking, is a recipe for disaster. Even on the brightest sunny day, the value of snow should be subdued so that highlights have a chance to register. Painting the main body of snow darker than the value of white by a couple of steps will usually solve this and give the overall sensation of what you are after. As an experiment, go out into a field of snow on a bright sunny day and look at how blinding the glare can be; but even with all of this glaring light, there is still room in nature for a highlight on this blinding mass. To prove this, make a snowball, throw it a few feet in front of you and notice the highlight as well as the darker shadow created by the indentation. Once you see this and finally understand it as a visual reality you can begin to express yourself artistically. Looking around at all the undulations created by the rolling ground, along with highlights and shadows formed by animal tracks, human footprints and snowplows, you will realize the possibilities you have in paint.
Along with value, the artist can bring to the painting expressive nuances with color. Going back to the beginner using white paint, one only needs to look around and make an earnest study of the subject in order to see the variations of color in a snow scene. The color can vary slightly depending on several factors, such as how dense or crystallized the snow is on a particular day due to the ambient temperature of the air and how clear the atmosphere is. The typical color of the sunlit snow on a sunny day with a blue sky is a warm gray with hints of cool temperatures. This gray can take on tinges of red, orange, yellow, green, violet or even blue, but these colors will be very subdued. The reason for this grayness is that the warmth of the sunlight is partly cancelled out by the dome of blue sky, which creates a relatively warm gray on the main body of the snow. This is due to the effect created by the stronger power of the sunlight in relation to the weaker power of the skylight. Since the main body of snow is not at an angle to the sunlight sufficient to create a highlight to the viewer’s eye, it will remain darker than other highlights in the same vicinity. This understanding will cause the artist to realize the futility of white paint as a solution in depicting snow. Subtle color variations are not only present in the sunlit part of the snow, but even more pronounced in the shadows. In these shadows the reflective quality of the snow will be more apparent and the artist will notice the reflected light from the surrounding landscape as well as the influence of the sky.
Due to the overuse of photography, many painters of snow scenes have been guilty of using too much blue in the shadows as well as too much pure white in the sunlit areas. When I look back at some of my early efforts in this area, I have to admit my own errors. But errors are what we humans learn from, and the best advice I can give is to go out in nature and study! Painting from life and numerous exercises in pure observation are the best cure for any of our faulty assumptions. Along with value and color variations, the expressive tool of edge control will give you that added dimension to paint snow or any number of things. To round this off, don’t forget drawing and brushwork (but more on those another time).
Below I have included several photos to illustrate my procedure for “A Winter Scene.” Notice how the original concept is an abstract idea that mimics the overall design of the finished painting. The ability to see each subject as a mental abstraction is an important skill for any painter. If the painting holds together as an abstract design it will work as a representational expression as long as the original concept is not lost in the finishing process. Good luck on your next excursion into the field.
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