A Series of Fragments of Moments Arc Gallery & Studios Karen Gutfreund, Curator
Copyright Š 2017 by Karen Gutfreund Art All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
A Series of Fragments of Moments A Series of Fragments of Moments offers a provocative exploration into the fragility of memory and explores ideas about passing time, narration, marking history and perception. Examining the ways in which memory is constructed, how individual and collective memories shape our lives, leaving an indelible mark, manifesting in objects, words and dreams that can function as physical traces or intangible points of contact to the past. The works reflect the simple act of marking a specific time to the recording of memory to construct identity. Whether illustrative or evocative, ephemeral or concrete, A Series of Fragments of Moments collectively speaks to the apparent dichotomies reinvented memory, loss and remembrance, the individual and the universal. This curated exhibition includes the work of the following artists: Shannon Amidon, Sherri Cornett, Katelyn Dorroh, Sally Edelstein, Karen Gutfreund, Penny McElroy, Michelle Nye, Priscilla Otani, Sibylle Peretti and David Weinberg This Exhibition is hosted by Arc Gallery and Studios, San Francisco from November 11—December 9 , 2017 Karen Gutfreund Curator www.KarenGutfreund.com www.GutfreundCornettArt.com
About Arc Gallery & Studios Arc Studios & Gallery features ten artist studios, a 1,000 sq. ft. art gallery, two smaller galleries and an art education center, along with the Kearny Street Workshop office, the Studio Fine Artist Network office and VEGA Coffee kiosk. Arc is located at 1246 Folsom Street, between 8th and 9th streets in San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood. Arc supports the making of quality art in all media, provides a nurturing environment for artists to create their work, builds a community of artists to encourage exploration of art, provides resources for the professional development of visual artists, and promotes appreciation of the visual arts in the city of San Francisco. http://www.arc-sf.com
Shannon Amidon Sherri Cornett Katelyn Dorroh Sally Edelstein Karen Gutfreund Penny McElroy Michelle Nye Priscilla Otani Sibylle Peretti David Weinberg
Shannon Amidon San Jose, California www.shannonamidon.com shannon@shannonamidon.com
Amidon is an award winning artist from San Jose, CA. She creates mixed media artwork primarily concentrating on the ancient medium of encaustic painting. She incorporates natural, upcycled and repurposed materials into her artwork, breathing new life into objects that would otherwise be destined for a landfill. Using environmentally safe and sustainable practices is very important to her. In addition to upcycling discarded objects and materials she also makes her own paints using natural earth pigments and binders. Shannon’s artwork has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Shannon was selected for the 2017 stARTup Art Fair in San Francisco. In 2015 she received the Leigh Weimers Emerging Artist Award and was identified by the curators of the Triton Museum of Art as an artist they feel are worthy of attention in the coming years. In 2011 she was named the SV Creates Artist Laureate, receiving a Fellowship Grant. She was also the recipient of an Eco Art Grant and studio make-over from the Art Inspector part of the Zero One Art and Technology Network. Shannon has been an artist in residence at The Ayatana Artistic Research Program in Quebec Canada, TechShop San Jose, Herhusid House Artist Residency in Iceland as well as the David and Julia White Artist Colony in Costa Rica. In 2016, 2015 and 2013 she was selected to create large, 400lb, 5ft x 6ft public art hearts for San Francisco General Hospital Foundation; two of the hearts were purchased by Genentech and one by Wells Fargo Bank. Shannon is active in her local arts community contributing her time, knowledge and art. She is the co-founder of My Art Resources; an online comprehensive source of business tools and professional practices for artists living in Santa Clara County and nearby cities.
In Between Days, Encaustic with 23K Gold Leaf, 48 x 36 inches, 2017
Things We Never Planned, Encaustic with 23K Gold Leaf, 20 x 16 inches, 2017 Unearthed, Encaustic, 36 x 26 inches, 2017
Fortunes of Time, Encaustic with paper, 14 x 11 inches, 2017 Remnants, Encaustic, 14 x 11 inches, 2017
Reaching for the sky (left), 4 sided encaustic sculpture, 24 x 4 x 4 inches, 2017 Eternally existing (right), 4 sided encaustic sculpture, 20.5 x 4 x 4 inches, 2017
Past to present, (left) Vintage books and encaustic, 9.5 x 5.25 x 6.5 inches, 2017 Everything in its place, (right) Vintage books and encaustic, 4 x 7.5 x 6 inches, 2017
Sherri Cornett Billings, Montana www.SherriCornett.com www.GutfreundCornettArt.com Sherri@SherriCornett.com
With degrees in political science and art as well as a long history of advocacy, activism and campaign work around human rights, women's rights, environment, education and the arts, Cornett combines these experiences in national and international curatorial projects, as well as her own sculptural and video work, each with the focus on building community and furthering dialogue around social and environmental issues. As a Partner at Gutfreund Cornett Art, she co-curates activist-themed exhibitions around the United States, such as What's Right, What's Left: Democracy in America, Social Justice: It Happens to One, It Happens to All and Beyond Borders: Stories of im/Migration. She directed an exhibition-based series of community events and conversations around water issues, rights, access and preservation in Flow. Through her role as Chair of the Women's Caucus for Art's International Caucus, she represented the organization at the United Nations, and created exhibition opportunities for women artists as Director of Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art, an art-based cultural exchange in China, and as Co-Director of Women + Body, an exhibition in South Korea. Her art has shown in China, South Korea, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay area, Oregon, Montana and various online venues in both solo and group exhibitions.
Artist Statement: While my mother was being diagnosed with frontal-temporal dementia and she was losing her own stories, my innate curiosity about memories, how the brain stores them and loses them, escalated. The neurologists and memory specialists fed me with new terminology, theories, suggestions for activities that preserve brain function, images and . . . more questions. How do we influence each other’s memories? How does telling our stories alter our memories? What is shared, collective, societal memory? I decided to use my personal history as my laboratory, as the creative resource for work about memory. And, then, develop ways to weave in other people’s memories and ways to explore those memory preservation activities with others. The beginning manifestations of all of this are the soma or neural cell body wall sculptures that are symbolic of particular groupings of memories in my own life. Wire dendrites and axons radiate out and hold tags upon which are written individual memories—my own, ones I have gathered from family and friends and, with the exhibition, those added by visitors. This project will continue to grow, with larger installations and more somas and memory cards, in future venues.
SOMA_BOOKS AND AUTHORS from What [(Is It) About My] Memory Project Wood, Photographs, Text, Paint, Markers, Wire, Fabric, Metal Box, Tags, 28 x 5 inches, 2017
SOMA_GATHERINGS OF FRIENDS from What [(Is It) About My] Memory Project Wood, Photographs, Paint, Markers, Wire, String, Leathers, Photographic Negatives, 20 x 8 inches, 2017
SOMA_SCATTERSHOT MEMORIES 1 from What [(Is It) About My] Memory Project Wood, Text, Paper, Mache, Paint, Markers, Wire, Padlocks, Keys, Paper Tags, 24 x 5 inches, 2017 *Blank cards provided for visitors to add their memories to this installation.
Katelyn Dorroh Los Angeles, California www.katelyndorroh.com Kadorroh@gmail.com
Born in Los Angeles County, artist Katelyn Dorroh attended Glendale Community College and then transferred in 2012, to the University of California, Irvine, and received a Bachelor's degree in Art in 2014. After graduating, Dorroh moved back to Los Angeles and continues to develop their practice. They have worked with various organizations on a variety of art related projects, such as Yarn Bombing Los Angeles (YBLA), KCHUNG, the California Poppy seed Collective, the Los Angeles LGBT center. The artist Katelyn Dorroh has a multitude of creative practices, some public, some private, some collaborative, some that were/are designed to be detached from this name, or any name. Traits or patterns most likely found in art made by Dorroh consist of specific material usage, labor focused making, and carefully devised open possible readings of work. Artist Statement: Needlework is a tedious undertaking. One has to breach, withdraw, cut, show, hide, plan, stretch, handle, penetrate, and, most importantly, repeat. A time consuming endeavor that’s easy to get lost in. The details of the chosen image often fade away, into a number of strands, numerous repetitive hand movements, increments of time, strain on the body, monetary cost, into an image suspended, turned to near visual gibberish like its auditory relative semantic satiation. For this work, the artist thought of a face. The artist let this mental image both form and disintegrate upon this sheet of clear vinyl. The stitches suspended in an almost imperceptible substrate to present the wholeness of the this image/memory. The viewer can see glimpses of the other side, the point where the artist lost patience, the point where the artist knew it was done and let the subject recede into the rest of the world. The viewer can see it, but one must strain to see it.
What I Remember, Mixed media installation, variable, 2012
SALLY EDELSTEIN New York, NY www.sallyedelsteincollage.com www.envisioningtheamericandream.com www.retroarama.com sallyedelstein@yahoo.com
Sally Edelstein is an award winning collage artist and writer whose work has focused on examining social fictions. Curating and deconstructing the cultural clutter of mid-century America, her social commentaries are served up with a twist of today as assumptions are wryly shaken and stirred. Exhibiting her work nationally, her work is also included, along with other 20th century artists, in “Conversations in American Literature, Language Rhetoric, Culture� an AP High School Literature Text Book published by Bedford/ St Martins. A multiple awards recipient from the Society of Three Dimensional Illustrators, The Art Directors Club of N.Y. and The Society of Illustrators, this New Yorker has served as a guest lecturer on post war American culture at Fordham University, The New School for Social Research and the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Artist Statement: The primary focus of my work is to deconstruct myths and examine social fictions. I use collage as a means of expression as it promotes a collusion of realities. The collages, composed of appropriated images are the sharpest illustrations not of reality but of societal stories we tell ourselves that reinforce cultural, gender and racial stereotypes.
Remembering What Was Forgotten—Traumatic Memory, PTSD and Childhood Sexual Trauma Mixed media collage, 16 x 19 inches, 2017
Remembering What Was Forgotten-Traumatic Memory, PTSD and Childhood Sexual Abuse My memory leads a double life of knowing and not knowing at the very same time. It is a constant, exhausting battle. This is a story about memory gone awry; about traumatic memory and its effect on memory functions and post traumatic stress disorder. I was sexually abused as a child by a parent. Here’s why I didn’t remember. Among friends, I am the go to person when it comes to history and trivia, priding myself on my steel trap of a memory. How then can someone “forget” an event as traumatic as childhood sexual abuse? Simply put trauma affects a variety of memory functions and dissociation is one such disruption. Childhood sexual abuse can create negative disturbances of memory such as dissociation and PTSD leading to problems in basic memory encoding, storage, and retrieval. Being abused by a trusted parent is the perfect opportunity for the victim to create information blockage. Memory blocking is not to avoid suffering, but because knowing about abuse by a parent is necessary for survival. But the body remembers. With PTSD, traumatic memories become dissociated, fragmented, free floating in time. They pounce into the present unbidden in the form of flashbacks, nightmares intrusive thoughts and images you cannot control. I search my memory bank for a coherent, narrative filled with nuance and detail but that is not how traumatic memory is. Those who expect a clear cut linear and logical account, seem to think of memory as akin to a Netflix stream; click on a title and sit back for an autoreactive documentary a clear cut representation of what transpired as though a camera had been there filming the whole time. That sadly is far from the reality. I am missing the explicit narrative of information necessary to make sense of the distressing body sensations and images. Memories of the trauma tend to be predominantly experienced as fragments of the sensory components of the event as visual images, olfactory, auditory, body sensations, out of context feelings xx
and intense waves of feeling For people with PTSD traumatic events are remembered differently than non traumatic events. They are not actually remembered in the normal narrative sense. Usually memory implies the relegation of an event into ones history. “I remember when� Where explicit memory depends on language, implicit memory bypasses it. Implicit memory is non declarative, unconscious, speechless , somatic. Dissociation and Fragmentary Nature of Traumatic Memories Children and adults who have been abused cope by using a variety of psychological mechanisms one effective way to cope with overwhelming trauma is dissociation, the immediate blanking out of reality so that memories are not stored in the first place, not in a narrative coherent way. Dissociation is an effective defense walling off what cannot be accommodated and actual memory goes into the deep freeze. Memory in The Absence of Memory In dissociation elements of the experience are not integrated into a whole but stored in memory as isolated fragments, sensory perceptions, intrusive images, behavior and body sensations. With PTSD I am missing the explicit narrative of information necessary to make sense of the distressing body sensations and images . I am a storyteller without a story with a beginning middle and end. Sally Edelstein
KAREN GUTFREUND Saratoga, California www.KarenGutfreund.com www.GutfreundCornettArt.com karengutfreundart@gmail.com
Karen Gutfreund has lived in all four corners of the United States but has now settled in the Bay Area in California from New York City. She has worked in the Painting & Sculpture Department for MoMA, the Andre Emmerick Gallery, The Knoll Group, the John Berggruen Gallery and the Pacific Art League. She now resides in Saratoga, CA and is partner in Gutfreund Cornett Art, a curatorial partnership that specializes in creating exhibitions in venues around the United States on themes of “art as activism” to stimulate dialog, raise consciousness and encourage social change. The exhibitions focus on topics of identity, women’s rights, gender, democracy, social justice, immigration and the environment. To date, Karen has curated and directed over 25 national exhibitions. Actively involved on the board of various arts organizations, she is also a member of ArtTable and the No. California TFAP Representative (The Feminist Art Project). A curator of feminist exhibitions and the past National Exhibitions Director and Vice President for the Women’s Caucus for Art, Karen actively promotes the work of other artists as a curator, consultant and mentor. She is also creating her own work, focusing on art as activism to effect social change and has been in 100+ juried exhibitions around the country and is in numerous private and museum collections. She is also an art consultant – renting/sales of artwork to corporations and individuals. Artist Statement: Fleeting, fugacious, ephemeral, drifting like my embroidered, transparent curtains with a summer breeze. Some random memories are so strong while years of memory/events have disappeared completely. What do we hold onto and what is left go. These stories we tell ourselves to reinvent the past in our own making. The sadness, the joy, the tears and the laughter; what will I retain and what will slip away. So much is gone already or can I be in anoesis: a state of mind consisting of pure sensation or emotion without cognitive content.
Anoesis, Mixed media on board, 40 x 36 inches, 2017
A Series of Fragments of Moments, Mixed media on canvas, 40 x 30 inches, 2015 Santori, Mixed media on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, 2013
Fugacious, Mixed media on board, 40 x 40inches, 2014
Penny McElroy Redlands, California www.magpieseye.com pennymcelroy53@gmail.com
Penny McElroy is an artist and teacher. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, and working as a counselor for 5 years, Penny entered the graduate graphics program at the University of Wisconsin / Madison. In 1984 she earned her M.F.A. from Wisconsin. That fall, Penny began her teaching career at Bethany College in Lindsborg Kansas. Since 1986, she has taught Graphic Design, Printmaking and Book Arts at the University of Redlands in Southern California. Penny’s artwork spans a broad range of materials and media, from drawing and painting to 3-D ceramic pieces. Recently she has been working with layered mixed media works on paper and ceramics that incorporate light. Penny’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including recently at the Cal Poly Pomona exhibit Ink & Clay, where her work, el matrimonio de Archimedes, won the University President’s Purchase award. Other recent art venues also include Arc Gallery in San Francisco, Skylight Gallery in New York, Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, India, Cali, Medellin, and Manizales, Columbia, as well as Quilmes, Argentina. Penny also maintains an active graphic design practice—5&dime design. She recently created the cover art and designed NarcoKnowledge: Thinking Through the Drug Wars by Patricia Wasielewski and Alexandra Bollella as well as the Gorsky Press reissue of Strange Toys by Patricia Geary. Penny also designed the cover art for Camera Obscura, a book of poetry by Rebecca Bednarz, published by Noemi Press.
sweet fragrant spring, graphite, colored pencil, ink, encaustic, metallic thread and digital composite on rice papers with led lights, 18 x 14 x 2 inches, 2017
in a single breath, you drifted away, colored pencil, watercolor, metallic paint, gold thread, encaustic, digital composite on layered rice paper, LED lights, 25 x 19 x 1.75 inches, 2017
I shall not see thee again, graphite, colored pencil, encaustic, metallic thread and digital composite on layered rice papers with led lights, 18 x 14 x 2 inches, 2017
Michelle Nye www.michellenye.com Born in Oakland and raised in the East Bay, I attended Berkeley, Albany and Alameda public schools, graduating from Alameda High in 1995. I studied fine art (painting and photography) at UC Santa Cruz and the Università di Bologna, Academia di Belle Arti, graduating in 1999. Currently I work at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery and live in Oakland’s Lake Merritt area. Wall Writings, continues an investigation of abandoned buildings I started with the Home Dreams series. These dilapidated buildings were discovered on journeys through California and the Pacific North and South West. While Home Dreams focused on the building within the larger landscape, Wall Writings takes the viewer up close and inside the buildings. In many ways this transition correlates to changes in my personal life; where once I focused on the outer world for change and satisfaction I’ve begun to look inward. To explore these themes I’ve written poems which inform and delineate how each image relates to my inner landscape: its structures, dysfunctions, beauties, and various states of hope, disrepair, despair, renewal, etc. The poems are then scratched by hand into the surface of the photo and oils are painted over the surface.
Blue Fridge (Bound) It became necessary to lay flat my need for you making due with politely cold edges dressed up in electric blues I forgot your subtleties and feigned forgiveness closing heavy doors on you Our woolly touches and pointed gesticulations once roaming loose and expansive are sealed over, painted shut inclinations are leveled and movements bound In this ever shrinking room Its girth impossible, unassailable knocks my knees black blue its persistence formidable bruises my elbows yellow stumbling and tripping I chafe at the effort required to contain the idea of you So I will crack a window and succumb to an insistent inhalation the tentative fingers of surrender expose the tracks of the hasty retreat finding the kicked up dust of our last knock down crash settled around the edges of this room
Blue Fridge (Bound), Photo, oil, ink. 32 x 23 inches, 2008
Exhaling into corners and under debris I will force open this stale structure prying apart cold shoulders kicking out locked knees this lumbering molehill shuffling, shifting and set upright will get out of my way all in order to let go of you
Central Light Fixture Lacking the (right) usuals, attires of reliable blue grays, fixtures in supplicating yellows, the ramrod of appeasing approachables, there was a danger inherently possible, my starry eyed glass coating, dusted thick, was shed, placed off sides, to clarify, exposing the rupture, an explosive rapture With all switches flipped (left), over exuberant voltage, ripped through circuits unwitting, intersections of glass shards, drew out the divisions, outlining fleshy forms, lodged in throats here, underlining their protests, stuck in eyes there, that saw it all one way Polygons and octoshapes, laughed out loud, liberally, amused at the violence, entrails of the subterranean, making a mess, spilling out of my blue lips, without stops or gaps, falling and crashing at their wide feet Squares and triangulations ducked away, avoiding the intrusive wake, strewn from the deck, to the living room, to the rooms that had been ghost like, sleepy, pulling up protective right angles and elbows, in it to their noses, having it up to here Straight lines pulled over, unkinked and woke up, peeking around corners, straining stiff necks, to see who would be shaken, assaulted, or married off next, where were the impacts, and how much blood was there really
Central Light Fixture Photo, oil, ink. 30 x 21.5 inches, 2008
I exploded in a hexadecagon, and knew no name or face, my eyes blew out, seeing only forms desirable, my skin peeled down, melting the zero temperatures, my throat unhinged, letting words tumble, a waterfall loud and unreasonable I am (at) left a raw current, a singularity exposed, as violence to the touch, essential to restrain (at) right, to contain with a glassy illusion, of customary well worn ways, allowing a la-di-da, I did nothing, over a live wire nerve, of I can do anything, (centered)
Stairs (Held)
In these rooms I looked for you calling your name, hunting you down when darkness filled the corners I took it as truth and turned my back on you All these years you were here your footsteps beneath my feet worn wood railings sliding under your palms as I crept up these stairs searching for you In this house I called you separate an other to resist, to forget your crumbling walls with exposed inclinations and inappropriate leanings all my reasons to long for you All this time I passed you by certain in security boarding up missed chances and dust choked failures where I assumed you oughtn’t be. All at once, turning and stopping there is a momentary truce when your beams of midday light sit on these steps held in place by my dark edges finally I see then there is no you, just we Stairs (Held), Photo, oil, ink. 33 x 24 inches, 2008
PRISCILLA OTANI San Francisco, CA www.mrpotani.com mrpotani@yahoo.com
Priscilla Otani is a mixed media artist, board member of the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art (NCWCA) and managing partner of Arc Studios & Gallery in San Francisco. Her works have been selected in Bay Area, national and international exhibitions including Women + Money, Social Justice: It Happens to One, It Happens to All, Crossing to Safety, Half the Sky, Choice, Alabaster Blast, Woman + Body, Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze, Hidden Cities, Control, and Banned & Recovered. She has curated and managed exhibitions for Arc Gallery, Pacific Center for the Book Arts, National Women’s Caucus for Art and NCWCA. These exhibitions include F*ck U! In the Most Loving Way, Sacred & Profane, Chaos, Women Artists on Immigration and Cutting Edge Books. Born and raised in Japan and a naturalized citizen of the United States, Priscilla identifies as bi-cultural. Artist Statement: Four images of those who bully and those who are bullied. Unifying the four are words of a handmade poempostcard sent by my mother. They roughly translate to “When I Want Someone To Talk To.” My mother and I have a complicated relationship. It will always be a one-way communication channel between us. Over the last fifteen years we took bargain-priced Japanese bus tours that included stops at various hot springs, inns and historic villages. The gentle motion of the bus on the highway and monotonous drawl of the bus guide were conducive to dozing off and talking. During these long rides mom shared memories of her childhood and mine. Her stories surprised me and forced me to question my own memories. Her recollections created context for my sickly childhood, tumultuous family life, intergenerational sibling relationships fragmented beyond repair, and her desire to live a solitary life in her old age. Whether true or false, her memories freed me and validated the life I chose to live. Now that her memories have drifted away I treasure the gift of memory mom shared with me.
When I Want Someone To Talk To, Mixed media on canvas with paper, acrylics and graphite, 10 x 10 inches each, 2017
Sibylle Peretti New Orleans, Louisiana www.sibylleperetti.com
German artist Sibylle Peretti is known for her glass sculpture and multi media wall pieces which combine photography and painting with surface interventions such as engraving, mirroring and glass slumping. She received her MFA in painting and sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cologne, Germany and a Master in glass design from the States School for glass making in Zwiesel, Germany. She is the recipient of Grants from the Joan Mitchell and the Pollock- Krasner Foundation New York and was recently awarded a United States Artist fellowship. Her work can be seen in many public collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, New York, The John Michael Kohler Art Center, Wisconsin, the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Speed Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, C21 Museum Hotel, Louisville , Kentucky and the Museum of Glass, Shanghai, China. She lives and works in New Orleans Louisiana. Artist Statement: In my work I explore the lack of harmony between human beings, nature, and our inability of achieving a unity with the natural world. I strive to uncover hidden worlds in which harmony can exist and heal. Children, who represent vulnerability are placed in a diaphanous universe of potential solutions and revived through a new and intimate, perhaps mystical reconnection to nature. While my work hovers between subjects of scientific curiosity, fairy tales and dreams, I use images of children to open our eyes to a mysterious sensibility we may have lost. My children—protagonists are immaculate in their innocence, transmitting a savage view of our own isolation. I examine the child’s identity in a world of adverse layers. The overlay and containment of irreconcilable natures—of disease and beauty, of intimacy and of distance and of innocence and knowledge – have typified the search I have found most important in my work. Recently I am interested in landscapes which present the inter zone between urban and rural space.. I see them as territories where reality conjures illusions. As the closest landscape to us they function as a refuge and escape where wilderness enshrines, but traces of humans are evident. I see them as a space of emotions, memory and solitude. The work invites us to journey into an unknown, undefined place of possibility, mystery and beauty where we find moments of clarity and introspection and may find answers about our own identity and how we experience our selves in the world.
Tear 5 and Tear 2, Glass and mixed media, 12 x 5 x 5 inches, 2009-2012
David Weinberg Chicago, Illinois www.d-weinberg.com www.weinbergnewtongallery.com info@d-weinberg.com
David Weinberg is a Chicago-based photographer whose work touches on a wide variety of visual interests. He received a BS in Business from Roosevelt University in 1967 and then worked for 35 years in his family’s business. Launching his second career in 2006, Weinberg pursued his true passion of photography. From formal abstraction to narrative portraiture, he hits an array of emotional tones throughout his work. His photographs aim to inspire the viewer to see the world in a more thoughtful way. David Weinberg’s photographs have been exhibited at such venues as the Elmhurst Art Museum, Art Chicago, Loyola University Museum of Art, and the Field Museum. He has recently had solo exhibitions at The William and Florence Schmidt Art Center at Southwestern Illinois College, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, and Jean Albano Gallery. Artist Statement: Mr. Wild’s Garden recalls an elderly neighbor from the artist’s childhood, who isolated himself in a house swallowed up by weeds and secrecy. Weinberg’s memories of Mr. Wild, shrouded in alluring mystery, served as a catalyst for this narrative series of photographs. They are an attempt at literally picturing the world through a hidden man’s eyes. Staged in abandoned greenhouses in Wisconsin, the thirty-one images capture elements of suspense and psychological voyeurism, granting us the unique perspective of simultaneously looking in and peering out. As the viewer traverses through the series, more questions arise than answers. Who are these figures in Mr. Wild’s world? Are they figments of his imagination? Or are they memories of family and friends? Does his dilapidated house act as a fortress that keeps out the world? Is the dying foliage a refusal to acknowledge the passage of time? Or does Mr. Wild embody self-acceptance? Is solitude his contentment? Has he come to accept the inevitability of mortality? Mr. Wild’s Garden is divided into four chapters, each capturing elements of suspense and psychological voyeurism. These haunting photographs hover between dreamlike wonder and dark fantasy. As vines and shadowy figures creep into each frame, the viewer’s perceptions are challenged. Fact muddles into fiction as time blurs the images of our memories. Perhaps the ultimate question posed by these photographs is How can we step outside ourselves to examine the worlds of others, and thus, to grow?
Mr. Wild’s Garden, Chapter 4, Plate 3, Archival digital print, 32.5 x 43.5 inches, Edition 1/20, 2010
Mr. Wild’s Garden, Chapter 4, Plate 1, Archival digital print, 43.5 x 32.5 inches, Edition 1/20, 2010
Mr. Wild’s Garden, Chapter 2, Plate 6, Archival digital print, 32.5 x 43.5 inches, Edition 1/20, 2010