Brigitte Carnochan, Joy Goldkind And Nancy Sutor At Verve Gallery
August 25th, 2010
Northern California artist, Brigitte Carnochan, will be exhibiting work from her new series entitled, Floating World, Allusions to Poems by Japanese Women of the 7th—20th Centuries. The series, printed on Japanese handmade mulberry paper, is a departure in technique from Carnochan’s earlier handpainted gelatin silver prints, but the relationship between the beauty of the human form and nature still guides her imagery and these new figure and botanical studies demonstrate a deepening of Carnochan’s signature style of sophisticated sensuality.
Carnochan found the inspiration for her new series while rummaging through a used bookstore in Princeton, New Jersey, where she discovered a volume of poems, mostly tanka and haiku—written by Japanese women from the 7th through 20th centuries translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi in 1977.
“I was immediately drawn to the poems, and as I read them—so allusive and rich in imagery—I knew that I wanted to make their photographic equivalents. I quickly realized that I wanted to create my own versions of the poems as well, which I did with the help of translators. The title, Floating World, refers to the conception of a world as evanescent, impermanent, of fleeting beauty and divorced from the responsibilities of the mundane, everyday world. For the poets in this volume (whose names are calligraphed in each image) that world centered on love—longing for love and the beloved, mourning lost love, pondering its mystery. The beauty of the natural world—its flowers, landscape, the moon, and the changing seasons—serves as the primary metaphor.” —Brigitte Carnochan
New York artist, Joy Goldkind will be exhibiting work from three bodies of work, including the processes of bromoil and ambrotype. Goldkind is inspired by the idea of the fantasy world and utilizes the camera tools of older photographic processes, double exposures and slow shutter speeds to assist in changing what is true and expected from a photograph into a more surrealistic scene. The old world beauty and quality the imagery possesses is influenced by a deep interest in art history.
The bromoil work in the exhibition contains images from her Adagio series in which she photographs the abstraction of dancing figures. The work centralizes its focus on the movement of the body through space and light. The other bromoils in the exhibition are from her new work focusing on body distortions.
“Having raised three daughters, I know that many women today do not really see themselves in the mirror. The mind plays games so that some think they are too fat or too thin and not pretty enough. The mirror is a powerful force in their perception of reality. These images show that the mirror does not always show exactly what we look like. As this body of work continues I hope to prove that what the mirror reflects, in reality is what the mind wants to see.” – Joy Goldkind
Santa Fe artist Nancy Sutor will be exhibiting work from her new series entitled, COMPOSE DECOMPOSE. While this new work continues Sutor’s study of the systems and cycles of nature that she explored previously through cyanotype photograms, the new work has a more literal approach and a further exploration of the way light sensitive materials depict vision and perception.
In this series, she explores the representation of time passing, light changing, germination, growth and decay. These images are not only a literal documentation of the artist’s garden – her refuge – but they become a metaphor for the need to generate sustainability on a larger scale.
“The surge in backyard, city and neighborhood gardens, the growing need to reduce the use of fossil fuels in producing and transporting food and the movement to convert distressed urban real estate into green spaces, all point to positive changes that can increase the health of the earth, communities and people. These images represent a direct experience of making dirt, germinating seeds, growing food, adding oxygen to the world.” – Nancy Sutor
The resulting images are dense with pattern and texture, silhouetted and flattened, or translucent and refracted, viewed from above or seen up close. Sutor shows the idea of transformation and dissolve as delicate flowers and food decay into composted dirt and shadows and natural projections become form.
BRIGITTE CARNOCHAN, JOY GOLDKIND, NANCY SUTOR
Exhibition Dates: Friday, September 3 through Saturday, October 16, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, September 3, 2010, 5-7pm
Bromoil Demonstration and Gallery Talk with Joy Goldkind
Saturday, September 4, 10:00am
Gallery Talk with Brigitte Carnochan and Nancy Sutor
Saturday, September 4, 2-4pm
VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
219 E. Marcy Street
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Press release and images provided by the gallery.
