{"id":30446,"date":"2015-11-09T02:11:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T08:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=30446"},"modified":"2023-11-18T15:11:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T21:11:41","slug":"extracting-the-subject-a-profile-of-josh-winegar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/extracting-the-subject-a-profile-of-josh-winegar\/","title":{"rendered":"Extracting the Subject: A Profile of Josh Winegar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jos_winegar\"<\/a>
\nphotos by Emily Call<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been talking for about an hour and are about to leave Josh Winegar\u2019s office to head downstairs when he says, sort of offhand, \u201cSo, actually, my office is a camera, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a lens I notice, then, in the window of his office, and the rest of the window is blocked off with black panels.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been chatting with Winegar in the Kimball Visual Arts Center at Weber State University where he makes work and teaches art and photography. We\u2019ve been discussing a new series of work he has on exhibit at the Granary Art Center in Ephraim, how he got to this point in art and life, several cameras he\u2019s built from scratch, and his tiny house in the forest. By this point in the conversation I\u2019ve come to understand Josh Winegar to be an artist of insatiable technical curiosity as well as conceptual rigor. He is interested in context, and much of the power of his work comes from what is missing, what has been removed.<\/p>\n

Winegar grabs a plastic chair from the hall so he can reach panels covering the windows into the hallway, and adjusts them to block out the light. Done, he closes the door, and switches off the overhead florescent.<\/p>\n

An upside-down ghost of the parking lot wraps the door to the hallway, the bookshelves, the walls above the book shelf . Telephone poles\u2014or maybe they are parking-lot lights\u2014jut down darkly into the sky. It\u2019s both disorienting and fantastic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI moved offices,\u201d he says, holding a white panel up a few feet in front of the door, \u201cand the lens was designed for the length of my old office, so it\u2019s a little bit out of focus in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u201d he says, \u201cthere\u2019s a car moving. That\u2019s always\u2026 where\u2019d it go?\u201d A hamster-size car slips off the panel he\u2019s using to focus his office\/camera, ripples across his sweatshirt, and slides upside down along the wall toward the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about the world being projected and silent that\u2019s really satisfying,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Winegar\u2019s show at the Granary, Burst a Part \/ Burst Apart,<\/em> consists of eight large photos (each 24\u201d x 28\u201d) that wrap the upper gallery. Each print is a landscape that has been slashed by a strip of light. The photos seem narrative, but the narratives are a mystery. When you get up close to the work, you see that the print has actually been slashed with an X-Acto<\/a> knife or a box cutter, there are tendrils of paper curling along the gashes of light\u2014as if the cut itself is allowing the light to come through. The rupturing isn\u2019t done with Photoshop. Josh says he uses Photoshop for color balance, dodge and burn\u2014that sort of thing. But the big slash of light through each of the pieces is done \u201clive,\u201d Winegar says. \u201cIn camera.\u201d For this series, he photographed the location, then, he says, \u201cI make a print, and alter the print, and re-photograph it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like making and building and I don\u2019t necessarily like staring at computer screens,\u201d he says. \u201cI get tired of the process all being mediated through a computer. A lot of my work is interdisciplinary or mixed media. There\u2019s a lot of hand in it. A lot of analog processes.\u201d<\/p>\n

His current analog process involves building a giant custom-view camera. We visited the camera in the studio he\u2019s working out of at Weber shortly after I arrived on campus. \u201cThese are my film holders,\u201d he says, shuffling through plywood film holders the size of large drawing pads. Winegar is 36, tall, sports a neatly trimmed beard, and wears a thick black hoodie. Currently he\u2019s working on the front standard, next he\u2019ll make the bellows. \u201cI want to make unique prints,\u201d he says. \u201cNot reproduced prints, just one-of-a-kinds. So I\u2019ll be able to do that at 24\u201d x 34\u201d. \u00a0Also, if I shoot negatives on it, I can enlarge those\u2026 theoretically you can get really good quality at like 40 \u201cx 60\u201d. I could do prints the size of that wall,\u201d he says, motioning to the nearly two-story studio wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a total Frankenstein camera,\u201d he tells me, \u201cEvery part of it is made out of salvaged materials.\u201d Except for the lenses, but he\u2019s thinking of custom-building one of those, too.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n