G. Steve Journal

Visceral

Just read about an exhibit of the W.M Hunt photography collection at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY that included this advice Hunt gives new collectors:

Open yourself up to the visceral experience of looking at photographs and pay attention to what makes your heart beat faster—not what makes your head pound.

What a refreshing sentiment and one that should be considered when experiencing any creative expression -- from music to poetry to visual art.

The Creative Process

I never tire of learning how the creative process is manifested for others and came across an article in the most recent CHRONOGRAM about author Esmerelda Santiago where she talks about her own experience, which is remarkably similar to so many others:

I really don't believe I'm creating anything.  What I'm doing is setting down something that's coming to me from some mystical source that I don't understand, but don't want to get mad at me. [laughs] I really believe these muses as an artist are these forces that are there to help you and nurture you, but you have to help them, too.

Going Deeper

That's the title of the show we're working on here at the gallery, and refers to our ever-evolving effort to explore what lies beneath the surface of an image.  It was the advent of the large-format nature photography book in the 1970's, most notably the Sierra Club book that paired Eliot Porter images with selections from Thoreau's journals, that provided us the first clue there may be more to a photo than meets the eye.

Since then, and following in the manner of Porter, we've tried to do more than simply document the landscape photographically. This latest effort, printing images on a variety of alternative media, is simply one more layer removed from the representative landscape and towards the expressionistic.

For the show we've tried to choose media that complement each of four different images: fabric for a spring panoramic, canvas panels for summer, wood for autumn and aluminum panels for an icy winter scene. 

Here is a photo of one of the ten 2'x2' panels that will make up the final 4' x 10' winter scene.