Ron Reeder
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As a retired biologist, Ron Reeder determined to remake himself into a photographer/artist. He has come to enthusiastically embrace both old-style film technology as well as the latest in digital wizardry. Reeder is the originator of the use of the Quadtone RIP for making digital negatives and a co-author of "Digital Negatives" published by Focal Press. Currently his printing is split about equally between the palladium process and the gum bichromate process.
Donald Satterlee
Gallery:
I grew up gluing model cars and airplanes together using Revell Airplane cement. Rat Fink and custom cars were about all I thought about. Now as an adult, the shimmer of chrome and custom paint hasn’t lost its allure for me. I always come back from Autorama with tons of digital closeups and details of all my favorite cars. These AutoErotica images create new objects from common car parts and seem to transcend the ordinary and in many cases become figurative studies. A metallic photo paper seemed the correct choice for printing these shiny objects. Please enjoy the images for what they are and not worry about what part of which model car they are from!
Kurt Edward Fishback
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The two bodies of work in this exhibition continues my experience with Nature; its beauty, grounding influence and healing properties.
The Nature Sprit Mandalas are made using photographic imagery from Nature I have captured including those of ravens flying around me on the Mendocino Headlands. According to Native American tradition the Raven is the guardian of both ceremonial magic and healing circles. Raven symbolizes the void - the mystery of that which is not yet formed. The iridescent blue and green that can be seen in the glossy black feathers of the raven represents the constant change of forms and shapes that emerge from the vast blackness of the void.
From the Indian language Sanskrit meaning sacred circle, Mandalas are gateways to our divinity, the God within us. Mandalas represent the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically and represent centered wholeness. They are microcosms of the universe from the human perspective and inspired by energy inherent in the Earth and Nature. The Mandala can be used during meditation as an object for focusing attention. The symmetry of the designs tends to draw the attention towards their center.
The Nature Spirit Landscapes began when I was working with parts of landscapes I had captured. When overlapped in the right way, faces that were human and/or animal in appearance become obvious to the observer. I became fascinated with the entities that looked out at me as I produced these images. Ironically, I tried this process with man-made objects and found that nothing of a human or animal nature appeared. These works are particularly impressive when they are printed up to 50 inches in length.
Mark McAfee Brown
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NIGHTBLOOMS are a series of digital art works that explore the space in which Nature and Technology collide, merge, marry and multiply. These are conceptual artworks in which I re-imagine, re-assemble and re-image the natural world, in a new visual world order. Nature newly unnatural - familiar yet unknown. These images are concerned much more with form, shape, allegory, visual and anthropomorphic relationships, composition and the emotional range of color than they are with flowers in a botanical sense, although without flowers none of them ever would have been made. They have a distant artistic antecedent in the works of Jan Brueghel the elder, who loved to paint flowers against a black background. They are more akin to paintings than to photographs.
These works are filled with time, seasons, forms, saturated colors and deep black space. From my garden I harvest what is blooming, budding, dying, colored, textured, warped or wonderful – depending on pre-conceived ideas for an image or natural inspiration. I scan these flowers, fruits, plants and vegetables using a flatbed scanner until I have the image or portions of an image that I want. In these works I use the scanner as a camera, shooting each “picture“ from below. Flowers are placed on top of the scanner with the scanner lid left open. I do a large number of scans until I have all of the picture elements I need for an image, depending on what the image, emotion and notion require to bring the picture to life. I then compose the images using Adobe Photoshop, a high-end image manipulation software program. Photoshop enables me to alter an image’s colors, saturation levels, brightness, contrast, texture, sharpness, clarity, obscurity and almost anything else. If I can imagine and scan something, I can create, manipulate and image it. I remake and refine these images until they are done, at which point I print them on a high resolution, eight color archival photo printer. They can be printed at very large sizes without losing resolution or sharpness. I am surprised and delighted by the promise and potential of this disparate mix of mediums; (high-tech/grow-tech/no-tech) and it is a rare treat indeed to have one’s studio and computer system filled with the sweet and heady scent of freshly cut flowers.
Dirk Van Denderen
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DvanD accepted a two-month posting as the photographer for a National Science Foundation (NSF) Artists and Writers Grant to the Palmer Station in Antarctica. Palmer Station is a remote oceanographic research station located on Anvers Island on the Antarctic Peninsula and is accessible primarily via the NSF icebreaker, Laurence M. Gould. With the support of Palmer’s staff, Artists and Writers enjoy a distraction-free environment in which to refine and enhance their projects. Daily routines included inflatable boat expeditions through glacial ice packs to document visually tantalizing ice caves, islands, ice arches, icebergs, glaciers and macrofauna. Following a day of shooting, evenings involved image processing, critique and mission strategy. The “Faux Edge Technique” evolved during these after hours sessions.
Six Blue Eyes: Donna Fay Allen, Susan L-Nikel and Judy Yemma
Galleries:
The techniques used by the three women date back to the earliest days of the photographic print process, which was discovered in 1839.
Included in the exhibit will be prints in cyanotype that produces a monochromatic blue print, and Van Dyke brown which produces a monochromatic print in shades of brown. Many color variations of the blues and browns can be obtained through selection of the fine art papers used, combining the two photosensitive chemical processes in a single image and toning the prints.
“I am attracted to historical processes as they allow me the opportunity to combine an older form of photography with newer digital tools, expanding creative possibilities. The resulting image possesses a unique, painterly quality that takes it beyond traditional photographic imagery”, says Yemma of her work. The sizes of the images in the exhibit are the size of the negatives used in the process. In addition to using large format silver negatives, the women use digital photographs converted into large digital black and white negatives in their work, as well as photograms, or images made by placing objects directly onto film without the use of a camera.
L-Nikel states she has been “drawn to the alternative photographic processes because “they present so many ways to express my creativity.”
“The ability to select the substrate whether it is paper or fabric is one of the strongest attractions I have to these processes”, says Allen. “I love the look and feel of the images on fine art papers, linen and silk”.
Tananarive Aubert
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My
interest in animals started with our numerous family pets, which have
included rabbits, cats, mice and birds. This broadened to an interest
in all wildlife, especially lions, leopards, parrots, zebras and giraffes.
I have served as a volunteer counselor at the Sacramento Zoo's summer
camp for children and held a volunteer position as a keeper's aide, which
was a great was to learn about the different animals. As a result, the
zoo has become a favorite place to take pictures of animals
Douglas Hope Hooper
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Neil Rankins
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I
love to dig in close to everyday objects and produce abstract images,
focusing on intense color, light, transparency/translucency, which I
use to sometimes layer objects in combination with glass or other materials.
Wendell Minshew
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Wendell has photographed his surroundings and the West Coast for over 23 years, resulting in a range of subject matter that includes landscapes, waterscapes, seascapes, mans impact on the environment, modern and historical buildings, still life, abstracts, portraits, and figure studies. Wendell works in a variety of mediums, including traditional black and white, color, and manipulated Polaroid SX-70’s
John F. Johnson
Gallery:
Invention
creates things out of nothing, while innovation brings together existing
elements to synthesize something else. My art is more innovation than
invention, because I find various elements, record them digitally, then
enhance them to make a new creation.
Ray Vaughn
Gallery:
I am self-taught in photography. The books of Andreas Feininger were immensely
instrumental to my learning. Photography is something you never cease
learning. I photograph in color everything beautiful that calls me to
it’s attention. It is as though there is an inner voice telling
me to look here, or, look there.
Rajiv Seth
Gallery:
I have chosen to plumb industrial wastelands… to find here among
the discarded and weathered machinery and other detritus, that nexus of
color, texture and design… To distill from this unlikely ore, these
painterly images – these abstractions – these mandalas –
elegant sources for insights that enrich the soul…
Jodie Hooker
Gallery: Manipulation -
Sharp, clear photographic reality is infiltrated by chaotic, gestural
and subjective thinking in the combination of photography and drawing
in my work. The photograph, sometimes hidden and sometimes clearly defined
by edges, represents physical reality. The drawing represents a more soulful
approach to the land that might be labeled spiritual reality. Combined,
the photo/drawings hint at an integrated reality that gives credibility
to the physical and spiritual aspects of life and the land.
Francine Moskovitz
Gallery:
I
have always enjoyed many kinds of photography – landscape, people,
architecture, and travel. But throughout the years, I‘ve looked,
in each of these, for ways to present abstract images. For instance, there
have been photos taken under water, the bodies and faces distorted by
the ripples and shadow patterns of the surface; a series taken at San
Francisco’s MOMA of architectural details that become graphic designs;
a portfolio of people, using double images. Currently, I am working with
the computer (with a miraculous program called Adobe Photoshop) to manipulate
the images.
Chris Schiller
Gallery:
It
all comes down to this moment: The elements of the composition are brought
together on the viewfinder. Each essential piece tugs gently on the others.
Connections being made that I will only recognize long after. Balance,
empathy, passion. A symphony of textures. As I find myself surrounded
by the image, the image becomes part of me. This manifestation, this marriage
of the earth, the elements, and me. The light shifts subtly, taking the
edges off, softening the distance, pouring the whole of the sky through
the prism of my lens. My heart skips, the shutter trips. The first two
beats of this visual song. At home, in the darkroom, I’ll learn
to play along.
Gary W. Vann
Gallery: Manipulation:
It
was through an interest in hiking and climbing in the Sierra's that I
became a landscape photographer. I seem to prefer simple repetitive patterns
and textures with contrasting detail, in natural light. Most of my work
deals with a foreground subject, generally having some special interest
for me. As an artist, I try to do what feels right at the time, mindful
that nothing creative occurs under pressure. I have no doubt that for
every photographer, each image has a story.
Shoka
Gallery: Manipulation:
It
is often the meaning behind the visual representation that gives the photograph
its strength, as with many other matters in life. Art should be an active
cognitive exercise, and I hope to offer the viewer a topic to contemplate
and discuss.
Laura Faye Mah
Gallery:
As
a child Laura had an interest in creating and crafting. Her favorite tools?
A hammer, a sewing machine and a camera. She received her first camera
at the age of five and soon after learned how photographs were created.
The magic of watching an image appear onto a blank piece of paper still
fascinates her today. Panorama and square formats create elegant images
that are interesting to the eye. Laura enjoys working with different panorama
or square format cameras, but the swing lens camera is her favorite. The
lens of the camera actually rotates. This rotation skews reality and creates
magical images. After the subject is photographed with black & white
film, the film is developed and a black & white photograph is printed
by hand in the darkroom. Photographic oils and pencils are used to hand
tint on the photograph. Hand tinting or hand coloring is one of the oldest
photographic processes. There are still examples of this historical process
existing from as early as 1842. If magic happens the image is created
in 3- 4 hours; but more typically 6-8 hours. She enjoys this part of the
process the most. It is the most rewarding and sometimes the most frustrating.
O. Truman Holtzclaw
Gallery: Manipulation:
After
22 years of serious photography (Competitions, Weddings, Workshops, Commercial
Projects, Portraits, Photo Treks) I have recently entered a new and exciting
phase of my photography. I call this “Camera-Computer Art”.
I have been working with computers since 1984. I started working with
the Photoshop graphics program in 1996. By combining my photographic images
with the Photoshop graphics program I have been able to create entirely
new, fun and colorful images. These images are heavily computer manipulated,
enhanced, and abstracted. I compare these new “Camera Computer Art”
images to oysters. Some people really like them and some really don’t.
I’m hoping that most viewers will be able to find some real “pearls”
among these new magical images.
Jim Collins
Gallery:
Upon
being exposed to digital methods of photography and computers, I decided
to try working outside a darkroom. I currently shoot 35mm film that
is drawn out and squeezed into the spirit of my experience while actually
making the photographic exposure. Images are printed on inkjet printers.
My main interests are in landscape work using color materials. I perceive
art for myself as mainly a process of color and form abstraction, with
the emphasis on color. I also create avian imagery when the time and
the birds allow. In addition to camera-derived art, I also continue
my interests in painting.