by Brian Goslow
Katherine Richmond is an adventurer and international award-winning fine art photographer based in Gloucester, Mass. Her work reflects her passions; land and seascapes, wildlife, documentary, portrait and abstracts. Artscope managing editor Brian Goslow exchanged questions with her via email in advance of the “Expeditions: From Iceland to the Gobi Desert” exhibition that will be on view from February 1 through March 10 at the Paula Estey Gallery, 3 Harris St., Newburyport, Mass.
TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR WORK THAT’LL BE IN THE SHOW IN TERMS OF TITLES, MEDIUM AND HOW IT WAS CREATED — AND WHAT YOU HOPE TO CONVEY THROUGH IT.
The name of my photograph is “Ludivine.” It’s a French word that I chose meaning divine light. The experience of capturing this taught me to put yourself in that place, where ever it may be, observe, and don’t give up, you never know what you might see, or learn about the environment you are part of.
After working all day, the once clear skies were now overcast. With the remaining light I went home and grabbed my camera and went back to the shoreline. When I arrived as it was quickly becoming darker, as I sat in my car debating, why bother. This shoot wasn’t going to work out as I had hoped, with the darkness closing in the images probably wouldn’t be viable.
It had also been several weeks since I had done anything creative, so I decided to get out of my car and make my way down to the shoreline and shoot anyway. Twenty minutes went by and just as I was about to leave the overcast skies parted while the sun was at its lowest point on the horizon during sunset. It was a surreal experience that took my breath away. I quickly adjusted my camera settings and started shooting.
This dramatic lighting lit up the breaks on the waves, casing and orange-yellow color on the surf. Due to the direction of the light the water and sky remained dark. This moment lasted 30-seconds or less. The opening in the cloud cover closed and it was over, darkness closed in. It was one of the most memorable moments I have had while shooting the ocean and waves. My goal is to have the emotional essence of this moment comes across to the viewer. Photography is not just about the equipment, it’s about a way of seeing.
DO YOU THINK CREATING WORK THAT CELEBRATES/FOCUSES ON OUR NATURAL SURROUNDINGS ENCOURAGES ITS VIEWERS TO BE MORE ACTIVE IN PROTECTING OUR ENVIRONMENT?
What I learned was there is always something of value when being creative, not necessarily a tangible outcome, but enjoying and learning through a creative exercise of subject matter. Each experience gives me further understanding of my artistic expression and nature itself. Many times, I have hiked across the rocky coastline in all kinds of weather, climbed down 20 foot cliffs, and sat in the seaweed for hours during a storm ready for something to happen. It is in these moments that I’ve discovered the subtleties of nature, provoking those feelings of responsibility in sustaining the magnificent ocean so integral to our own survival.
(“Expeditions: From Iceland to the Gobi Desert” featuring work by Lisa Lebofsky, Lisa Goren, Will Nourse, Katherine Richmond and David Stone, can be seen from February 1 through March 10 at the Paula Estey Gallery, 3 Harris St., Beverly, Mass. You can read an excerpt from our preview of the exhibition – and find out how to get a copy of our January/February 2018 issue – and find out how to get your copy — here: https://artscopemagazine.com/2018/01/ice-ice-baby-expeditions-at-estey/.)
ON THE EDGE: STORROW’S EVOLUTION OF STYLE
REVIEW
NANCY STORROW: EDGELAND
NEXT STAGE GALLERY
15 KIMBALL HILL
PUTNEY, VERMONT
THROUGH FEBRUARY 13
by Marguerite Serkin
Nancy Storrow does not take her artistic vision for granted. She finds her inspiration in the hills and natural landscape of Southern Vermont, where she has made her home for over 50 years. In Storrow’s current exhibition, “Edgeland,” on view at the Next Stage Gallery in Putney, Vermont through February 13, the artist has offered an opportunity for a rare retrospective of her work, conveying a subtle evolution of her stylistic approach over the years.
“For the past 10 or so years, I’ve worked with pastel and graphite,” Storrow shared during a recent interview. “I shifted from watercolor and woodcut prints, then to oil and oil paint sticks, and then to pastel and graphite. I have always preserved WHITE as space or air,” Storrow added, “but also as a gentle reminder that this is a drawing on paper.”
“Pollination” (2017, pastel, pastel pencil) highlights Storrow’s attachment to growth and emergence. Seemingly impelled by a force just below the working surface, the clustered pastel lines spread upward and outward, as though celebrating their very existence as they transition into being. The lines are lyrically organized, and offset by delicate smudging and a distinct yet harmonious counterbalance between light reds and oranges and a hardier green contour.
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The Country Between Us at The New Art Center
By Cole Tracy
Newton, MA- “The Country Between Us,” on view at the New Art Center in Newton through December 20, takes its title from Carolyn Forche’s book of poetry that focuses on her personal experiences as a journalist dealing with violence in El Salvador. The show, curated by Ariel Freiberg, whose work is joined in the exhibition by Resa Blatman, Susan Still Scott and Zsuzsanna Varga Szegedi, takes on a political position.
While this work does not come out and make a definitive statement, it addresses perceptions of the body as well as the changing landscape, two crucial facets to our modern identity. The show is cohesive due to its questioning of painting, with each artist pushing the medium to fit their needs.
Freiberg confuses the genre initially by painting images she has already collaged, which originated in high quality magazine advertisements. The decontextualization of these lush advertisements are critical of our modern existence, with the floating body pieces beginning to resemble carcasses, their displaced and confused shapes creating a violent tension. Textures and tears juxtapose against what clarity exists. Freiberg rips apart the American psyche by looking at today’s commonplace imagery.
Zsuzsanna Varga Szegedi’s work is based around images she paints over. Through erasing the image by applying large amounts of white, she universalizes landscapes, emphasizing its mechanical nature. Szegedi focuses on images of trams, bridges and other forms of architecture, covering the majority to leave strange remnants of concrete and metal floating within a white frame. The machinery depicted floats in landscapes that are unplaceable but commonplace, a dream or a memory. By removing the context of normality with which we view them, one is able to glimpse a closer reality to objects we view as second nature.
Susan Still Scott creates sculptural painted objects. She uses recycled canvases, fabrics, staples and wood and meshes them together into new forms. They recall Duchamp’s readymades in the strange context that a gallery space places them within. By mixing art mediums to create strange forms, it tears the art object out of its hierarchical context. She uses the materials with a serendipitous freeness not commonly applied in such stern rolls that have been attached to them over centuries. She furthers these ideas by placing them nontraditionally throughout the show: leaning against a wall, sitting on the ground and on a pedestal with a rolled canvas on top.
Resa Blatman’s landscape-based paintings look surreal, even computer designed; these depictions focus more on beauty and less on specificity of place. Each is an odd ephemeral background of what appears to be sky with vines intersecting at various angles. She then creates laser cuts and breaks the canvas; there are also objects jutting off the image, reminiscent of the vines on the picture plane. The break makes one navigate the sublimity of these images in a different way, an inventive approach to address contemporary issues in the land; this makes a point of the destructive qualities of nature. By splitting up the planes of the image and adding three-dimensional structures coming off of the painting, Blatman brings the genre into the future by utilizing modern technology in her classical landscapes.
Freiberg’s work seems the most outright political. In one, a mixture of dirt and spices are swiped on the floor to resemble a landscape, which is littered with human ears. The surprise of finding these ears floating in a brightly colored mass of texture is indefinable; several references immediately came to mind.
The human pieces within the dirt show a landscape of war similar to that portrayed in Susan Meiselas’ photograph “Cuesta Del Plomo”, which documents the turmoil during the overthrow of the Somoza Regime in Nicaragua. The lush green landscape is contrasted by a decomposing body in the foreground, the person’s jeans leaving the lower half intact, while only remnants of a spine are intact from the torso, the body leaking into the land. It’s hard to point out the relationship between the landscape and human violence of war — both successfully evoke this. Finally, I can’t help but recall that surreal shot from David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” whenever I see an ear in dirt.
I’m challenged to sum up the show — there are paintings that leak onto walls, a video installation within a silhouette of a face and a dirt painting on the floor, a curation that challenges the viewer but does not force them to a specific point of view. However, the show is brilliantly inquisitive and can be appreciated by bystanders and art historians alike.
(“The Country Between Us” runs through December 20 at the New Art Center in Newton, 61 Washington Park, Newtonville. For more information, call (617) 964-3424.)