Steven Holmes | Remains | East Gallery
Stabat Mater
Archival Pigment Print | 44" x 115" | 2017 Exhibition Review by Gil Scullion:
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Artist Statement:
In college, with no money for film, I walked around with an empty camera, clicking the shutter at moments. I remember being vaguely aware that these phantom photographs were not ‘of something’ I was seeing, but were the result of moments of fleeting connectedness to where I was. Moments of feeling part of something immense. In the early 1990’s, I found a way to describe these experiences in language borrowed from theology and religion. For a brief time it helped me justify or explain what the images “were about.” But despite and because of this justification, I had made a gross error. I had begun to make a project out of these ‘connections’, and had gone out seeking them. Eventually, I realized it doesn’t work that way - thinking that moments of connectedness appear as a result of seeking them. The images I was seeking were nowhere to be seen, because they didn’t exist. They would happen only after I had stopped looking for them. But I didn’t know that then. By 1994 I stopped making art altogether. I literally packed it away. In the fall of 2004, I spent an afternoon with Sol LeWitt, and talked about a range of topics, including why I had stopped making art. A lot of time has gone by since that conversation. I have come to terms with the fact that the only art I can make is the art that I have only ever been able to make – records of very specific, fleeting moments of connectedness – sometimes in the most sterile of places. My photographs are not ‘of’ those places, but are the remains of those experiences, residue of moments of connectedness. These images are not about places. They are about moments of immediate connectedness, moments of being. These images are of what remains. |
In Honor of the Life and Work of Curtis Hanson | West Gallery
Walking Down The Lane
Oil on Linen | 40" x 36" |
Artist Statement:
Curtis Hanson was one of the leading interpreters of the Connecticut landscape in our time. In his later years, he also travelled to Thailand annually, to paint and meditate. Having settled in Connecticut in 1979, Curtis took over an old church in Cornwall Hollow in 2001, living and working there. His work was very much driven by his immediate surroundings, the views from his windows, the gardens around the house, the nearby river, what he saw on the long daily walks he took. As his wife Onwarin says,” Each day we would go for a long walk. He walked in all weathers and seasons. When he walked he would always be looking for the next painting. He would take a camera with him, and if he saw something he wanted, take many photographs, reviewing them in the studio. Or he would go back the next day and paint it. Some pictures he found just looking out of the window from the house.” The paintings in the exhibition are from his last years. Some have never been exhibited before. Prints Available for sale
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Phyllis Crowley| Partial Vision: Blizzard | TDPGallery
Crossing
Giclee Print | Edition of 3 | 24" x 72" | 2018 |
Artist Statement:
I have long had a fascination with looking through an obfuscating medium to see my subject in a new way. In this series I am photographing blizzards through the car window, which is frosty, icy or dripping with melted snow. The best results come from a windshield mostly covered with a crust of precipitation, and this necessitates not turning the heat on, and rarely using the wipers, both conditions being unfriendly to safe, comfortable driving, The dripping window images are the result of driving to a new place, therefor needing to clear the window and get a bit of heat. The Blizzard series was prompted by the recognition that the weather is becoming more unpredictable and extreme. Blizzards, floods and hurricanes have become more common and more violent. The frequency of blizzards in the North East has doubled in the last 20 years and requires greater preparation. However, the intent of these images is perceptual, rather than political. I am attempting to show an experience, evoke a feeling, and prompt memories of snowflakes swirling around our heads and into our eyes, obscuring our vision and sparking our imagination. |