As the world continuously rotates, seasons change through time. While one organism is born, another dies. In order to allow this constant rebirth of life, the seeds of life need to be planted. Plants as well as all of the creatures of nature have ability to reproduce and disperse their seed and their progeny, some across many miles. Much like the coconut drifting across the sea trying to inhabit a new island, to form future generations, Earth drifts through the cosmos like an untethered island. So what types of seeds do we as earthlings spread or receive through the galaxy? Michael Bravo’s artwork guides us through this journey of time and space, collecting, recording and creating around the human perception of this fecund Universe. A traveling man by nature, Michael Bravo takes a refreshing approach in this survey of his art, revealing his knowledge of multiple mediums of art.

Michael Bravo’s artwork is an exploration of his personal interests and discoveries throughout his life. It is an authentic reflection of his exploration into the inner workings of his subjects—the parts we don’t see—and his subjects’ interconnectivity. His personal philosophies about life are expressed throughout this body of work. Bravo is able to apply his acute sense of his subjects and has a broad intuitive ability to reinterpret their information artistically, drawing out aspects of his subjects that would otherwise remain unseen.  He feels that life is an interactive process that is always changing and it is important to understand our individual experiences. He has been exploring these ideas through painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture.

Bravo loves to travel and loves the feeling of waking up somewhere new and not knowing where he is. For years he documented his destinations by drawing. He drew cities to record human activities and their artifacts. His precisely accurate drawings often took several trips to the same site to finish, and after one particularly cold day he decided to start photographing these places instead. His father, a photographer who used a large format camera, influenced his work greatly. Bravo began traveling to the Southwest, taking pictures. There he found empty spaces that truly fascinated him. Through photography he tries to push his energy into that space and imagines the pictures as some form of real estate. There is a physical magnetism that draws him to these places. They are spontaneous in their discovery and he often revisits the ones he likes best. The process of re-visitation is driven by the desire to understand that place and how it has changed. Bravo also goes back to learn more about himself and his own changes. His intention is to photographically record this destination in a manner, which alone would satisfy the viewer. 
  
A change that had a huge influence on Bravo’s photography was the introduction of computers. He loved the possibilities of the computer, the way they helped him improve his picture’s capabilities. For the first time he was able to print large photographs from his negatives. The image Sheep’s Head, his first large-scale print, started as three black and white negatives. They were scanned, merged into a panorama, the bands were removed and the negative space was drawn in digitally with Photoshop. Bravo then added subtle color in select areas of the landscape. The effect is timeless, vast and still. He was conscience of the resemblance between these empty spaces and lunar images, which had always intrigued him. N.A.S.A.’s images of lunar landings and exploration photos are what aided in him visualizing these photos.

Bravo has always been able to combine his personal interests and art. As a fisherman on the California North Coast’s rivers, he found himself bringing home more objects for artwork than fish, especially driftwood. As his collection of driftwood sticks grew, he started leaving the fishing pole at home so he could carry home more sticks. He paints the sticks and stacks them to make different forms.  This combination of natural forms and bright colors creates a strong contrast.  Much like Bravo’s other work, he attempts to breath life and energy in an otherwise lifeless form.

Bravo is investigating several different themes throughout his artwork. His fascination with translucent objects started when he was very young. He wanted to draw what was on the inside of objects, not just what was visible. He started with the ellipse, which is a challenging form to draw realistically. As a child he drew cars just so he could draw the ellipsis of the wheels. Later, he figured cakes were something that were ellipsis with a familiar association. Cakes, the dessert kind, gave him the freedom to paint celebratory forms that evolved from the exploration of how space works. To Bravo the cake image represents the shortness and sweetness of life. The candles are a symbol for taking chances, because “if you never light the candles, you can’t get your wish”.

The theme of translucency is expressed through his sculptures as well. Several pieces are made of clear acrylic but have the look of carved ice. Two such pieces, Amp and Juvenal are included in this exhibition.

The idea for these sculptures came from his early observation of “suicide knobs” on the steering wheels of old hot rods, He recalls one acrylic knob made of this same material, which had the look of clear, flawless glass with a three dimensional red rose suspended on the inside. He wanted to see how it was done, and use that knowledge to create art.

He began carving small pieces, experimenting with the translucency and the information that he could imbed within the sculpture. He cuts thick sheets of Lucite into various shapes and then carves them down with an industrial grinder , which adds texture and shapes the piece. The stacking and gluing of these craved slabs gives rise to their shape and volume. Since many of these pieces are hollow, they enable him to abstractly paint the interior to give them more depth and add color.

Abstract painting has allowed Bravo to address formal concerns without being influenced by image. He wants to hold visual interest by making the viewers think and try to figure it out, as there are no easy conclusions to his work. He avoids painting recognizable objects to get an image without bombarding the viewers, so they are able to draw their own conclusions. His large abstract paintings usually take six months to a year to complete.  He builds them up on paper with layers of polymer medium and acrylic paint, paints on it for a few days, and then adds another layer of polymer.  The paper becomes a thick multi-colored canvas with too many layers to count. The textured layers converse with one another enriching each other’s presence. Observing these abstract paintings from multiple vantage points is a must, in that it changes depth, space, and colors depending on one’s distance.

Bravo’s ability to successfully move through a series of steps to achieve a goal is what drew him to teaching. He was able to share his ability to physically execute a series of actions to get the desired results. He taught his students the important process of making lines and shapes without giving away the whole subject immediately. He encouraged them to get lost and then find themselves again throughout their artwork, the same way his teachers encouraged him. While attending California College of Arts and Crafts (currently called California College of Arts) in the 1960’s, he was greatly influenced by his professors Robert Bechtle and Roy DeForest. They were exciting to be around and passed along their own special way of relating to the world. Bravo learned what it means to be an artist, and also the responsibility of addressing the world through a visual language that is understood by everyone. It was at the CCAC that he started his dot series. He painted European in 1966, which is a map orientation of Europe using dots as in a stylistic motif.

The dots also relate to of Bravo's fascination with seeds and their importance. During a trip to a Pacific island, he was walking along a beach and saw thousands of seeds washed ashore. They were from several different places around the world, and had all ended up there. While some people may think this was a pure coincidence of nature, Bravo saw it as nature's plan. He began thinking about these tiny origins of life all traveling long distances to achieve their destiny and reproduce. He was able to visualize this same concept in the cosmos, and began painting seeds and star patterns as one. He employs images of the night sky as the backdrop for his dot images; Bravo has conceptualized multiple pictures of forms in space. Just as these tiny bits of genetic information travel on the waves, earth is a ball of genetic information floating in space. The idea that something as vast as our universe is so similar to the tiniest of seeds helps put Bravo’s connections into perspective.

Michael Bravo has a personal and exciting way of viewing the world. As  art fans, we are lucky enough to be invited into his world, to catch a glimpse of his perspective through his art. Bravo feels as if the knowledge passed by his professors has been granted to him for a reason. This reason being, so that he can pass on this knowledge of life and love for art on to future generations. His knowledge of self is reflective through his work. This artistic insight has evolved through years of experience and personal development. Bravo’s ideas expand above and beyond both time and space to a place where the imagination can be free and to run wild. The most important piece of information which he share’s is the concept of connectivity. In life the seed is usually the beginning for all and all organisms over time will return to the earth. Bravo’s ability to capture and express these concepts through various mediums is a trip through the familiar in to the unknown.

Essay by Jacqueline Smith and David Ramirez

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present The Oaxaca Humboldt Print Exchange from April 7 through May 20, 2007.  Featured artists include Shinzaburo Takeda and his students from la Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca  (UABJO), in México; as well as Professor Sarah Whorf and her students from Humboldt State University (HSU). Humboldt State University and UABJO participate in a number of intercollegiate exchange programs.

This cultural exchange between the two universities and their respective communities features a wide variety of printmaking processes and themes; with a special emphasis on the theme of the Nahual, a traditional belief, indigenous to the Oaxacan region.

Humboldt State University’s First Street Gallery is pleased to present The Vanishing Point: Paintings by Erin Whitman on exhibition from August 24, 2007 through November 4, 2007.  This exhibition features paintings and photographs from Whitman’s series, The Vanishing Point.

At the core of this exhibition, are four paintings, which were previously part of a complex installation composed of paintings, tableaux and three-dimensional objects. Using herself as a model, each painting depicts the artist in multiple poses occupying a dizzying, maze-like architectural setting—a brick labyrinth of rooms, alleys and courtyards set in a winter’s landscape. Her imagery is reminiscent of the dreamlike settings for Jean Cocteau’s “La Belle et la bête”, or Lewis Carroll’s,  “Alice in Wonderland”. Her intention is to create a compound self-portrait, the permutations of her psyche and memories registered in the twisting architecture of her art. Through these multiple depictions of herself, Whitman achieves a self-portrait, decidedly unique, and outside of normal pictorial conventions.

Whitman was born and raised in San Diego, California and came to HSU in 1997 to pursue her undergraduate degree.  She graduated in 2003 with a double major in Studio Art and Art History.  Whitman then attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, Michigan and in 2006 received her Master of Fine Arts in painting.  She returned to HSU in January of this year to teach painting and drawing as a lecturer in the Art Department.

A reception for the artist will be held during Arts Alive! on Saturday, September 1st.  Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California.  Admission is free.  Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead. For more information call 707-826-3424.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present, Young Alumni 2007: Works by Recent HSU Graduates, on exhibit from July 5 through August 5, 2007. The exhibition is billed by First Street Gallery as a clear demonstration of the excellent career preparation that Humboldt State University offers its Art Majors.

Art is one of the highest enrolled majors at the HSU campus. HSU’s Art Department offers classes with 25 full and part-time instructors, multiple, well equipped studio facilities and several campus showcases that enable undergraduates to enjoy an early experience of presenting their works to the public.  Additionally, students enrolled in the Art Department’s Museum and Gallery Practices Program gain practical, hands-on experience as they design, coordinate and curate exhibits at First Street Gallery.

“The alumni participating in this show have all developed to a point where they are working at a professional level as artists,” states First Street Gallery Director Jack Bentley.  “All 16 participants demonstrate real evidence of artistic success.  Crucial to their success, however, are the less tangible qualities they all share—a dedication and commitment to making art as a way of life and a deep engagement with their work on poetic and intellectual levels.” 

Participating artists are: Marci Carl- ceramics: Caitlin Collings- photography; Jessica D’Avanza – photography; Britta Gudmunson - photography,; Tom Harley – painting; Patrick Hillman – photography; Jamie Loomis – painting; Elizabeth Perez – painting; Heather McFadin – metalsmith/jewelry; Justin Mitman – ceramic sculpture; Avery Palmer – ceramic sculpture; Fernando Ramirez – painting; Bryan Schoneman – sculpture; Victoria Viramontes – painting; Tara Weidenhammer – printmaking and painting; andBrian Woida – sculpture.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present,  d  d  D 
3-D Art by HSU Alumni Metalsmiths, Jewelers and Sculptors, opening on October 3rd.

“The alumni participating in this show have all developed to a point where they are working at a professional level as artists,” states First Street Gallery Director Jack Bentley.  “The 6 participants demonstrate real evidence of artistic success.  Crucial to their success, however, are the less tangible qualities they all share—a dedication and commitment to making art as a way of life and a deep engagement with their work on poetic and intellectual levels.”

Participating artists are:
Erin House – metalsmithing and jewelry 
Anthony Johnson – sculpture, 
Brianna Kochick – metalsmithing and jewelry, 
Sierra Pahl – sculpture, 
Lia Sharp – jewelry, 
and Jon Lyn McCallum – sculpture.

The exhibition is billed by First Street Gallery as a clear demonstration of the excellent career preparation that Humboldt State University offers its Art Majors.

Art is one of the highest enrolled majors at the HSU campus. HSU’s Art Department offers classes with 25 full and part-time instructors, multiple, well equipped studio facilities and several campus showcases that enable undergraduates to enjoy an early experience of presenting their works to the public.  Additionally, students enrolled in the Art Department’s Museum and Gallery Practices Program gain practical, hands-on experience as they design, coordinate and curate exhibits at First Street Gallery.

3-D Art by HSU Student and Alumni Metalsmiths, Jewelers and Sculptors, will be on exhibition from October 3 through November 2.  A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday October 4th during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive program.  HSU First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12noon to 5 p.m. and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California.  Admission is free.  Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead.  For more information call 707-826-3424.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present A Regional Holiday Invitational Exhibition , which will officially open on December 2nd and will continue through December 23rd. Featured in the show will be artwork by five artists from California's North Coast, who work in diverse styles and mediums.
  
The participating artists will display photographs, works on paper, ceramics, sculpture, and paintings.  “We're very excited to bring together these artists, many of them HSU alumni, during this holiday season," says First Street Gallery Director Jack Bentley. "This exhibition will remind those of us who live here, how fortunate we are to live in a community that is also the home of so many wonderful artists."

Of special note, the exhibition will introduce the fine art photography of Kellie Jo Brown. Brown, who is the staff photographer in Humboldt State’s Marketing and Communications Department, breaks away from the editorial-style photography for which she is widely recognized to display her more personal work.  Using an unconventional approach, she makes the photographs of still life and landscape subjects using long exposures through a pinhole camera to create sensuous photographs that revel in color. 

A Regional Holiday Invitational Exhibition is produced by Humboldt State students. Students enrolled in the Art Museum and Gallery Practices Program participate in the daily management and planning of shows at the gallery.  The gallery provides real-life opportunities for the students to develop their gallery and museum skills, which in turn provides them with experience that will help them to enter the job market. Many students who have participated in the program have gone on to careers in museums and galleries throughout the nation. 

This essay was prepared by HSU students: Ryan Cox, Stepanie Guel,
Jill Moore, Jon McCallum, Adam Poore, Charissa Schulze and Brian Tyzzer.

Lori Goodman’s installation, At Bay, is based on her observations made during numerous hikes through the Eureka Wildlife Sanctuary, whose beauty and ecological complexity she believes is locally underappreciated. Her desire with this exhibition is to draw attention to the sanctuary while making a cohesive gallery installation. Goodman’s approach is to extract and then amplify visual elements from the sanctuary, interpreting the site through a sculptural installation that employs many sizes, shapes, and colors of handmade papers.

Through the repetition and alteration of organic forms, artist Lori Goodman invites us to reflect upon and appreciate our world. Goodman looks intimately at life; absorbing the minute details through a process of dissecting and exaggerating her observations, she presents nature’s often overlooked beauty in the gallery space where it can be seen in a new light. Goodman hopes her work will elicit personal contemplation and scrutiny from her audience, stirring us towards environmental and self-awareness in a compelling yet unpretentious manner. In a world seemingly saturated by industrial destruction, Goodman is conscious of how easily we can become complacent and ignorant regarding nature. We may notice the spectacular aspects, the brightest flower or the oldest tree, yet we increasingly fail to appreciate the less fantastic: the reeds, the sands, the grasses, and the marshlands of the Earth. However, by emphasizing the relationships between humans and our effect on the environment and by contrasting organic forms with inorganic shapes and colors, Goodman awakens us to a realm that has always been there for us - the forgotten natural world.

Lori Goodman was born in Montana and grew up in Los Angeles, California. She started taking art classes in college and received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Los Angeles State University in 1966. While still in college, Goodman moved with her husband to Philadelphia, and in 1973 they moved to Humboldt County, California to raise their family. Later, in 1990, she earned a Master of Arts degree in Sculpture from Humboldt State University. Goodman’s original love of weaving opened the doors to paper-making and the fiber arts in which she has been involved for over a quarter century. In that time she has owned and operated a fiber arts store, taught a variety of textile and fiber arts classes at various universities, and displayed her work professionally in New York, Oregon, Switzerland, Belize, West Africa, and throughout California.

During the months of July and August, Humboldt State University First Street Gallery will present,  Beaux Zoos: Animal Imagery in Art, opening on July  5th.  The exhibition will feature art by six visual artists from California’s North Coast: Amy Granfield, Kelly Leal, Lush Newton, Rachel Schleuter, Naomi Mest and Peggy Loudon.

The six artists in this exhibition each use animal imagery with zoological or anatomical subjects covering a broad range artistic sensibilities and approaches. The use of animal imagery by artists reflects the long tradition in art of using such images to express various aspects of cultural, societal and political conditions.  The tenor of the art in this show runs from the sublime to the farcical, from the poetic to the political, stretching across the mediums of painting, drawing, ceramics and sculpture.

These paintings explore the different ways representations create meaning and what it is that makes a description accurate.  I try to create paintings that are very open for interpretation because I think meaning ultimately is dependant on some kind of exchange.  I often paint animals because they help bring the paintings into an area of play, and make them more inviting.  I find this important because visual expression has its own realm of diction that is so commonly manipulated, we often become desensitized and less willing to engage.  In my paintings, I try to create space where the viewer can inject that definitive quality on their own terms.  In working this way, I am always reminded how no single point of view can fully define an image.  I think that meaning is something that requires some investment, and also that the mechanisms of expression and perception within us are abundant and innate. 

Kelly Leal 
Summer 2008

It's easy to be facile about the interconnectedness of things, perhaps because it represents our supreme hope.  Yet it may also be our greatest fear: that we are not greater than, but the same as all else.

I have a BS in Soil & Water Science from the University of California, Davis, and an MS in Natural Resources from Humboldt State University.  Of course nothing we learn ever goes unused, and my interest in the natural world has continued, but in a less rigid structure.

In my work I mingle science and emotionalism.  People place themselves at the center of their world, and fail to recognize the systematic importance or the “soul” (essence, dignity, nobility) of plants and other animals.  Without plants and photosynthesis in particular, there would be no mechanism for energy input into the living world.

Viewers may experience my work as strongly aesthetic because I portray natural elements carefully rendered in settings either richly worked or ethereal.  However, I see my work as strongly emotional and political.  Just the act of placing these objects at the center, enlarged and dominating, challenges our notion of a world centered about ourselves.  My animals are caught in a moment of some stress, i.e. living.  Observed reality is prismed by my own sense of wonder, creating an unsentimental but empathetic view.  It is an aesthetic of challenged beauty, with loss, tenacity, humor, yearning and most of all of possibility as common themes.

I am inspired by the same subjects as always: stalking denizens of the fields and air in order to picture them back to us.  Their portraits invite us to remember them, to be discomforted and comforted, and to meditate on our relationship with them: our place among them, and within them looking back at us.

I paint in oils, on canvas and board.

Amy Granfield
Summer 2008

This work offers a glimpse into the inner workings of the heart.  It is a departure from the safety of the wheel and an exploration into areas a little less comfortable… connection, loss, and hope. Inspired by memories and tempered by time, they reflect a reverence for the everyday experience of the beating heart.

Naomi Mest
Peggy Loudon  
Summer 2008

Rachel Schlueter is a self-taught oil painter.  She was born in Chicago Illinois in 1960 and Resides in Humboldt County, California.

Rachel’s painting style is expressive in use of color and lavish brushwork.  She states that, “I have considered myself an artist all of my life though it is only now that I understand what being an artist means; It means work.  True inspiration comes with work and it come not before but during and after much hard work.  I paint for inspiration.” 

Rachel Schlueter
Summer 2008

Beaux Zoos,  will be on exhibition from July 5 through August 10.  A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday July 5th during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive program.  HSU First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 noon to 5 p.m. and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California.  Admission is free.  Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead.  For more information call 707-826-3424.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present, Exclusion Zone: Photographs by John Mahony, on exhibit from February 2nd through March 9th, 2008.  This exhibition will feature photographs from various international and domestic sites of environmental degradation into which Mahony inserts male and female figures engaged in a variety of dramatic, often enigmatic actions.

After graduating from UC Berkley as an Art major, Mahony moved to Salmon Creek, California where he has worked for several years as a land developer.  While participating in a watershed protection project, Mahony photographed train wreck sites along the Eel River in California. He noticed, “The train cars were really ugly but also very intriguing, getting twisted, turned, embedded and polished by the river and nature.”  The experience led him to rediscover his passion for art and his desire to capture something beautiful and meaningful within neglected, often misunderstood settings of environmental distress.

Mahony focused on photography and challenged himself to portray man’s disruption of nature and nature’s inevitable, albeit altered, reclamation of the earth.  Some of these sites include the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in the Ukraine, the Hanford Nuclear Preserve in Washington State, abandoned mining sites, and military aircraft crash sites.  Mahony introduced the figure of brides into these spaces as a human emblem of fertility and hope; a symbolic salve to these wounded, forsaken landscapes.  He further populates his pictures with attendant grooms, and a variety of other characters arcanely interacting with one another to enhance the dream-like, post-apocalyptic quality he sees in these Exclusion Zones.  

Mahony has gone so far as to risk personal exposure to radiation in some of these hazardous areas in order to present to us with a poetic vision of humanity’s current relationship with nature.  Telling of his life-changing trip to the nuclear wasteland of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in the Ukraine, he reflected, “it’s such a phenomena to be in a place surrounded by an invisible poison, that you can not see or smell… it’s very sobering to be there and to experience what that’s like.”

The title of this booklet and the accompanying show, Exclusion Zone, references the world’s premier toxic wasteland, Chernobyl, Ukraine. Specifically, the zone is an area around the world’s worst nuclear accident with a radius that extends between approximately 100 and 500 kilometers that is uninhabitable for another 100,000 years. This wasteland is strewn with crumbling high rises, 6 abandoned nuclear reactors, gutted factories and rotting farmhouses. It is also a lush forested area where trees have sprouted out of rooftops and roadbeds. At times I wonder if our entire planet is headed for this distinction—too polluted for human habitation, and yet wild again, and being taken back by the other species.

John Mahony, November 18, 2007

John closes his eyes when he talks. I don’t know if he is imagining what he is going to say or if he is bashful, hiding from the attention that his words attract.

When John and I flew to New York City together in November of 2002, only 14 months had passed since the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center. Our journey had begun in California the day before, a cruise south in John’s pick up truck down highway 101 through redwood glades and vineyards to Oakland. It ended with an afternoon taxi ride through the dense urban landscape of New York City. The cab driver told us stories about his old neighborhood in Queens as we skated past it and crossed the river into Manhattan. Our hotel room was twelve stories up and looked down onto 7th Avenue and Madison Square Garden. After unpacking we had dinner at a restaurant around the corner on West 31st. It was 7 o’clock New York time and we were modestly hungry. Three lost hours traveling against the sun’s arc had pushed time back to midafternoon in our heads. The waiter spoke with a heavy Italian accent. The redundancy of waiting tables year after year to dunder-headed tourists had filtered the pretense of care out of his voice. That didn’t much matter to us. We were artists and we were in New York City.

In the morning we set off for a photography convention on 11th Avenue. I attended a dry lecture on the improved color gamut in the new ink jet printers of the day. At lunch time John’s models, two New York women he had met and worked with in Humboldt County, California, found us there at the Javits Convention Center. With costumes and camera gear we crowded into a cab, and drove around Manhattan looking for a location in which to shoot. The location turned out to be the site of the fallen twin towers of the World Trade Center. The two women disappeared down a stairway just off Church Street into a nearby subway restroom and emerged minutes later gliding across the street in wedding dresses. Surely to those watching, the majority being tourists, it was the small kind of big city thrill that one can’t wait to describe to their friends back home, or at least chat about over a beer later. Here you are visiting the site of the worst terrorist attack ever on US soil and there is a New York Photographer shooting for Vogue no doubt. To embellish the spectacle, there I stood with my Rolleiflex photographing the photographer. And to further cement the evidence of our visit were the numerous bystanders snapping away with their cameras, our likenesses now carefully preserved between the pages of vacation photo albums all over the world.

However this was no big New York City photographer, but what I would normally consider a reserved quiet man from Salmon Creek, California. What they were witnessing was more along the lines of a good old fashioned “happening”, some odd piece of performance art, with an improvised script, actors, and a director and photographer rolled into one, all on location at the most hallowed ground in the city, at that time maybe even the country. It was then that I realized John was a performer. I’d seen and printed thousands of his images. We had discussed f-stops, lighting, cropping and the usual odds and ends, but I had never seen him work. I didn’t really know what to expect, and nothing could have prepared me for it. He was like an actor who disappears into his role.

I hid and watched the scene in reverse through the lens of my own camera, apprehensive and in a state of slight disbelief that we were actually doing what we were doing. Can you get arrested for taking pictures of would-be brides at the memorial site of 911? John and the models seemed nervous too. They worked with a sense of urgency, fueled no doubt by the thrill of the spotlight entangled with the anxiety of being a public spectacle. They must have been worried that people would misinterpret their little play as a mockery of this sacred place and the grievous event that now defined these city blocks.

This couldn’t have been further from the truth. For as long as I have known John he has been drawn to the places in our world that are damaged, that need healing. Though I have never thought of him as a saint, his work casts light into those places, and is no less heartfelt than the flowers and letters left behind at these tragic sites.

Were people upset? Far from it. Fascinated, many gathered around to watch the three street performers. Others, no less curious, puzzled furtively from a distance. Though there was an enigmatic, what is going on, quality to our presence that drew people’s curiosity, I couldn’t help but sense there was a spiritual draw as well. Being in the presence of a bride in a public place is close to a sacred experience for people. It may seem as though I am overstating this, but having been a wedding photographer I have witnessed this phenomenon. Other than birth and death there is little else that holds such sway in our culture as the sacred right of marriage. There is a sense of reverence and awe when the public happens upon a bride being photographed in a secluded location. And here we had two, in a very public, emotionally charged place. Behind the high chain link fence that surrounded, essentially, acres of air heavily laden with absence, was a large hole in the ground so clean, it could have been mistaken for the excavation of new construction. The truly powerful and heartrending reminder of what had taken place here lay just a block away, where written tributes and flowers clinging to a church’s wrought iron fence fluttered in the afternoon breeze. On the sidewalk below stood a photographer and his two angels.

We rarely ever get to see this process of the artist making his art; it is generally a private endeavor. This day, a single soul, thoughts hidden, laid his working process bare to hundreds of complete strangers. As John often does, he shot with a wide angle lens. This put him within arm’s reach of the two women, almost physically in the picture himself. John’s close proximity forged a synergistic relationship between himself and the models before him. He moved like a fashion photographer on location. His models in their wedding dresses moved with him. It made me think of Matisse’s, The Dance. There was a circle of joy and movement, a connection between the photographer and his models. It made me realize how vital the actual act of making the photograph was to him, perhaps more important than the success of the final image on paper. The push of the shutter button was the crucial moment of creation. The dance that lead up to it, a kind of foreplay.

John might not like being compared to a fashion magazine photographer, even though you could argue there are similarities. Fashion photography is about the clothes, and their prestige. The costume in John’s pictures, the wedding dress, is a powerful symbol in our culture. Placing the model in an environment that is contrary to what one would associate with a bride, the ruins of Chernobyl, train wreckage, the site of the fallen Twin Towers, only emphasizes this symbol. This tactic has been used before by commercial fashion photographers, though it is unlikely that they have had to carry a Geiger counter with them to avoid the hot soil, or chosen to kayak down the Columbia River, or climb the spans of abandoned bridges, or scale mountains of debris in a scrap yard.

We live in a world of bad news, filled with harrowing doses of tragedy so numbing, it blends into white noise. It’s no wonder that everything else on TV seems to be an antidote to the latest war, crime, or environmental disaster - a cocktail of fluff, an opiate of meaningless entertainment. In a twisted circle, these tragedies and real life horrors ultimately become the entertainment. Video games, TV and movies are more violent than ever. Nothing shocks us anymore. In our screen worlds it becomes difficult to separate reality from fiction. Which is “based on a real story” and which is the real story? Ironically, however, it is the screen that often replaces real experience for us and acts as a barrier between us and our environment*. For John, his art is a conduit, a way to truthfully experience his environment and come to terms with what is happening in the world; to place his feet on the real ground, breathe the real air, and see the real thing with his own eyes; to think about the state of the world and his place in it.

Twin Brides Facing Ground Zero, 2002
New York City

What does the cryptic language of symbols have to do with the way we experience the world? Symbols speak to us in a way that may on one level seem bewildering, but prod at a quiet part of our within. The artist’s journey to examine these symbols and encroach upon self discovery begins to encompass something bigger as we view his pictures. What do these symbols mean, if anything, to us? What is our place in the world?

What we, the audience, are left with is the evidence of the artist’s journey, his photographs, a brew of the photographer’s literal intent and meaning, artistic training and influences, veiled personal biases, the models’ personalities and improvisations, the location and light at the moment of capture, good luck or bad, accidents, happy or not, and finally the inutiae of the digital processing world. We never see the multitude of images dismissed as failure by the artist. Perhaps he has unwittingly relegated his masterpiece to the recycle bin on his desktop. Back in the day before the digital printing revolution, when I was hand printing real silver gelatin prints for John, he would hand me his marked up contact sheets to work from, and I would always think, “why isn’t he printing this one, and why is he printing that one?” It was clear my tastes in his images ran toward the more formally beautiful and enigmatic pictures that lacked the trace of a narrative. It seemed that these images, to him, were often the accidents, or perhaps the aberrations, and though interesting, ultimately were not what he wanted to accomplish with his pictures. Many of his images I thought smacked of a melodrama, that seemed artificial, were often his favorites. Then there were the scores of images that seem to stray into the middle ground.

John and I have often talked at length about the conflicting influences that are at odds with the purity of an artist’s originality: 1) The opinions of others, the desire for worldly success, and to engage and please a larger audience, versus 2) A maverick sensibility, to follows one’s vision and be damned what anyone else thinks. This is a tightrope that many an artist must learn how to walk, and ultimately decide which shade of grey they can live with. A critic might say that John’s work lacks the singular clarity of vision. But is the path to understanding ourselves a straight line? I would say that any journey worth taking, especially as an artist, is about the side trips, listening to the voice inside and going where it takes you, not about trying to fit your work into a neat ideological box. That sought after
mature clarity of vision, if it is ever reached, is a result of all the train wrecks and mountain peaks, the friction of the journey and it’s shaping of the artist’s persona. The guide through this odyssey is a map inside the artist’s mind revealed piecemeal only to him.

On the way John cannot help but see beauty in the forms of pollution and decay he reviles, or be distracted by the eroticism and sensuality of the human body. In the heat of the moment, peering through the camera’s lens, light flashes off the river, piercing the bride’s veil, dazzling his eye. The way shadows play across the model’s skin have nothing to do with any preconceived grand design. It is a beautiful picture and the shutter is released. Of the thousands of images taken, a final image, reflecting off the gallery wall, flips upside down through the lens of the viewer’s eye and sifts through their own personal filters. This picture become a tantalizing synthesis of the artist’s journey and our own personal experience.

When John takes a photograph his eyes are wide open.

A Faculty and Staff Exhibition showcasing the talent of the artists who teach and work in Humboldt State University’s Art Department will be featured at Humboldt State University First Street Gallery in Old Town, Eureka, California.  The exhibit will run from August 26 through September 21.

“The students benefit greatly from the broad and diverse artistic backgrounds of the staff and faculty of the HSU Art Department,” commented Jack Bentley, Director of the First Street Gallery.  "This exhibition demonstrates how Humboldt State’s Art Department provides students with practical, living models of individual success in the art world while also providing them with the critical abilities to understand and interpret a variety of practices in the visual arts.”

This particular exhibition will give students and the public an opportunity to see how the instructors at HSU approach their own art, outside of the classroom.  The public will be introduced to a wide range of themes and styles, which include works in ceramics, drawing, graphic design, jewelry, metalsmithing, painting, mixed media, photography, printmaking and sculpture.

The gallery will also exhibit pieces by some former professors.  Bentley cites the inclusion of these antecedent artists in the show as a way to demonstrate the depth and the evolution of the Art Department.

A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, September 6th from 6-9 p.m. during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive event.  Celebrating its tenth year of service to HSU students and to the North Coast community, Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California. Admission is free.  Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead.  For more information call 707-826-3424.