News and New Work, Summer, 2021

A Exciting Commission

I’ve be invited to design art for about 550 square feet of wall space in the new branch of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, now under construction in the Seattle’s Othello neighborhood. By contract I cannot show the chosen work until the clinic’s formal announcement later in the year.

Here are some of what I created as possibilities for the site but that will not be included in the final project but are available for exhibition, rental, and purchase. Note that this is large work, intended to be over 8 feet in height. So the images here lack considerable detail.

Mr. and Mrs. Le Step Out of the Kitchen of their New Deli,
Othello Neighborhood, Seattle
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
73 x 44, edition of 4
Dog Walkers, Othello Neighborhood, Seattle #1
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
73 x 44, edition of 4
Dog Walkers, Othello Neighborhood, Seattle #2
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
73 x 44, edition of 4
On exhibition Oct. 2 – Nov. 13, Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY

The work above reinvigorated an interest in portraiture, which has occupied me at summer’s end. Here are some of my thoughts on portraiture, followed by additional works in my now growing project. First Encounters is a series of multilayered photographic images in which I’ve asked complete strangers to pose for me and then blended the portraiture layer with several from the surrounding location. The three portraits above and the first three below are part of the project.

I didn’t interview the people in my First Encounters series and I know no more about them than I leaned from asking them to pose. Why should I pretend that portraiture captures. At its best it suggests.

Visual portraiture is a unique form for so many reasons. It takes the expansiveness of a human life and frames it, something that gets clumsier and more unreliable with every attempt to be objective. So it is more effective if it offers up a open story. Even when the subject is well known the visual portrait is a much about a life, a person, as it is about a specific, named life. We may know that we are viewing a named individual but we respond to that person as a construction we build from the information in the portrait–and thus as an identity, real and defined but without history or verification. We know what we know about that identity and feel what we feel. But if we are wise enough we recognize both the difference between our constructions and the lives of the subjects and the value of understanding those constructions.

So the detailed presentation of the physical person should not be central to portraiture but merely as one of many elements whose inclusion may help the observer form a subject identity and connect it to his or her understanding of human lives. Some of my portraiture work places the physical subject at the core of the portrait but includes elements to supplement the information about that person’s life. At the opposite end of the spectrum are portraits that exclude the physical appearance of the subject from the array of ways to establish her identity. In other portraits I offer a generally representational image of the subject but obscure it in some way that suggests we need to look beyond the facial recognition to grasp something of the life.

Bouquet
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
73 x 44, edition of 4
Kid Creed at Work, American Visionary Art Museum
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
64 x 44, edition of 4
Hey Mister, Take Out Picture / Chicago’s Welcome Wagon
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
32 x 32, edition of 8
Me, Aging in Place in a Covidian Landscape
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
44 x 64, edition of 4
(not part of the First Encounters series)
Tess in the Studio
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
36 x 24, edition of 4
(not part of the First Encounters series)

I continue to create for other projects as well. The following piece is one of three recent efforts that each grew out of an interest in grasping the aging of place, which is the topic of a curatorial project that I have proposed for a possible residency.

Still Life in Situ
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
Three separate prints, each 73 x 44, to be hung as shown, edition of 4

I’m still thinking in mural mode as a result of the commission. So I created for a proposal for large still life work for display at a transit station, where it would be shown at 75″ x 225″. I also will offer it at 44″ x 124″ in an edition of 3.

Sourcing Dessert
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
44 x 124, edition of 3

New Work, April – May, 2021

Grasslands Restoration
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
32 x 32, edition of 8
E Unum Unum / A Stand of Aspen is not Aspens
Multilayer archival pigment print
36 x 24, edition of 12
Walking the Ravine
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
24 x 36, edition of 12

New Work, November, 2020

At the Art Institute
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
31 x 43, edition of 7
Why Crows Sing Karaoke
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
31 x 43, edition of 7
Construction
Multilayer archival pigment print
30 x 44 (unframed), edition of 7
November at the Zoo
Multilayer archival pigment print
32 x 32, edition of 7
The Chestnut Trees
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
31 x 43, edition of 7

New Work, October, 2020

One Last Picnic for Homo Demens
Multilayer archival pigment print
30 x 44 (unframed), edition of 7
The Zoo Penguin Swims into Autumn
Multilayer archival pigment print
44 x 30 (unframed), edition of 7
Clean the Slate
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
24 x 100, edition of 3
Many Hopes, One Pond
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
24 x 100, edition of 3
El arduo trabajo de soñar
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
24 x 100, edition of 3
Automatic Reset
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
24 x 100, edition of 3
We Are the Wind
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
24 x 100, edition of 3
Sailors’ Delight
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
24 x 100, edition of 3

New Work, September, 2020

And So Into Tomorrow
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
43 x 31, edition of 7
Ode to Public Lands #10
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
31 x 43, edition of 7
Threat and Promise in the Heartland
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
43 x 31, edition of 7
Changing
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
24 x 52 (unframed), edition of 5
Frond’s Eye View
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
31 x 43, edition of 7
Ode to Public Lands #8
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
31 x 43, edition of 7
Wildfire
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
32 x 32, edition of 7
Ode to Public Lands #7
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
31 x 43, edition of 7

New Work, August, 2020

Five Orangerie Skylights
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
31 x 43, edition of 7
Moses Waits and Dreams
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
43 x 31, edition of 7
Anthropocene Studies #2
Archival pigment print on photo paper.
Layers include two photographic images, a relief and embossment print onto photographic image, and a photograph of an intaglio and embossment print on crumpled glassine.
44 x 30 (unframed), edition of 7

Newest Works, July 2020

I am continuing a productive stretch but wish that I could be completing physical prints of my new work, something that is out of bounds for me until the quality facilities I need are again open to me. Still, I am pleased to preview the following for you. Click on any image to open in image viewer.

Still Life on Cactus
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print. All layers shot at Les Grandes Serres, the fine botanical conservatory at Les Jardins des Plantes in Paris.
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New Works from May and June

Silence. Life within the new, close boundaries that COVID has set for us is quieter in all sorts of ways. Less traffic noise, more birdsong. Fewer live voices. But as May and June have shown us, the times are begging for our voices to be heard. At my age COVID makes makes joining together physically too risky. So I have struggled to put my voice of anger and of promise and of unity and of freedom into my work. But that work needs to be seen for the voice be heard. So I thank you for listening to the following.

Democracy Dies Before Our Very Eyes
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print
44 x 30 (unframed), edition of 4
Passage to Eden
Multilayer photographic archival pigment print (including a photographed monotype)
24 x 24 (unframed), edition of 8
Places of Worship Remembered, May, 2020
Archival pigment print
22″ x 60″ (framed), edition of 6