Bromoil prints by Joy Goldkind
Joy Goldkind, whose works here have been curated by BMG’s Bernard Gerson from two recent bodies of work entitled Adagio and Distortions, works with digitally-taken and computer-refined negatives that she then prints using a bromoil darkroom process that uses bleach and lithographic-like ink pigments to create effects that “increase the softness and adds mystery to the original images, taking them a step away from reality,” as Gerson has put it.
“The Bromoil Process was used by photographers of the pictorial movement because they wanted their work to have a more artistic rendering. It is this step away from the clear photographic interpretation that I am looking for in my images,” the Long Island-based artist says of her work, which most recently has focused on dancers’ gestures and the further movements they can intimate. “The images from my work are at times created and inspired from a fantasy world to have an ‘otherworldly’ quality…Creativity by deviating from the predictable is a valuable tool for furthering the artistic vision. Basic techniques are simply a starting point in the process of developing a recognizable style… The portrait for me is a picture of a person’s place in life as well as what that individual feels inside.”
According to Gerson: “Adagio focuses on the dancing figure, abstracted with timed exposures to portray movement through space and light. Distortions is a series dealing with self-image and the mirrored reflection that is a powerful force in the perception of one’s own reality.
Goldkind, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology NYC, has had her works featured in numerous international publications and exhibited across the country and internationally, including a recent solo exhibition at the Museo Nationale Della Fotographia in Italy, where her work is in the permanent collection. She was just awarded Photographer of the Year 2010 by The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards.
Contemporary Bromoil will be on display through July 4 at Galerie BMG, located at 12 Tannery Brook Road in Woodstock, Fridays through Mondays, and other times by appointment. For further information call 679-0027 or visit www.galeriebmg.com.
CPW sets lecture schedule
Even before new seats and air conditioning were installed a few years back, there’s been a crowd keyed into every lecture the Center for Photography at Woodstock’s been running most summer Saturdays — as well as some Friday nights — since the late 1970s.
There’s something unique about sitting in half light on a summer’s evening, shades drawn, as an artist shows slides (or digital projections) and discusses what’s gone into his or her work, with anecdotes and a rare openness to local audiences built from years of such exposure. Especially when these lectures — made possible by the workshops CPW offers each week by some of the world’s top photographers — have become a local tradition, drawing a devoted crowd who have grown dedicated to all they learn about the creative process from these events, but invariably share lessons with their supposed teachers, as well.
And while the workshops started last weekend, with CPW Executive Director Ariel Shanberg and photographer Gerald Slota teaching their annual “Getting Known, Being Shown” classes to roomfuls of eager up-and-coming artists, the annual lecture series kicks off this coming Saturday, June 5, when top commercial photographer Bobbi Lane — a specialist in corporate work — talks about “Portraits: Studio & Location,” in tandem with a weekend workshop on lighting techniques (along with simultaneous classes by CPW Studio Manager Phil Mansfield on use of flashes and landscape photographer Greg Miller on his own processes.)
Following a week of workshops on the field of Encaustics & Photography, taught in tandem with R&F Paints of Kingston, noted teacher and photographer Elinor Carucci, who is leading a workshop on “Personal Narrative” will give a photo lecture on Saturday, June 18. (Palenville-based digital photographer Dan Burkholder will also be working with those interested in High Dynamic Range photography that same weekend.)
On Saturday, June 25, the lovely Elizabeth Opalenik, one of the last of the specialists in the nude still left at CPW, will augment her workshops with a slide lecture on “The Sensual Image,” followed on Saturday, July 2 with master printer Tom DeLooza, now working with the new John Dugdale School of 19th Century Photography and Aesthetics in Stone Ridge, discussing his methods and processes (which he’ll also be teaching that weekend.)
Moving on into July, Woodstock’s own Craig Barber will show some of the new wetplate works he’s been doing of local folk living with the land in mind on Saturday, July 9 while teaching a workshop on his previous specialty, pinhole photography. (That same weekend, Kathleen Sweeney will also be leading a workshop for teen photographers). On Saturday, July 16, Chichester photographer Carla Shapiro will show some of her stunning portraiture work about women while leading a “Tuning into the Creative Process” workshop, simultaneous to Joan Barker’s “Intro to Digital Photography” classes and a teen photo class from Phil Mansfield. And on Saturday, July 23, old processes’ master Dan Estabrook will lecture, and show slides, during his weekend workshop, “Photographic Memory,” run concurrently with a Matthew Palin session on “Adobe InDesign for Artists.”
Following a month-end workshop with Lindsay Gleason on “Photographic Artists Books” run in collaboration with Women’s Studio Workshop of Rosendale, as well as sessions on “Digital Retouching & Restoration” with Chris Jordan and Henry Horenstein’s micro-specialist “Secret Worlds in Plain Sight,” the CPW lecture series restarts in early August with legendary photojournalist and filmmaker Ed Kashi, speaking on Saturday, August 6 while leading a workshop on “Visual Storytelling in the Digital Age.” The following Saturday, August 13, noted contemporary landscape photographer discusses and shows “The World Around Us,” while Burkholder again holds a workshop on the side, this time on the au courant subject of “iPhone Artistry.”
After Jean Sanders leads another WSW collaborative workshop, “Introduction to Photogravure,” during the middle week of the month, Alan Rapp and Jona Frank will lecture and lead a session on “Publishing a Photographic Book” on Saturday, August 20, after which the populat teaching team of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb speak about “Personal Photojournalism” and show their remarkable work on Saturday, August 27.
Things kick off in September with what’s been CPW’s most popular annual lecture of recent years, New Yorker photographer Mary Ellen Mark on “The World Observed,” on Saturday, September 3. Following another encaustics and photography workshop with RF Paints (taught by my wife, Fawn Potash, and Danielle Correia), as well as some more Mansfield-led digital printing sessions, the lecture and workshop series then close out with a Saturday, September 17 lecture on the magic of nocturnal photography with Jill Waterman, and then Andrea Modica on “Environmental Portraiture” on Saturday, September 24.
Workshops continue into October and November with more encaustics and digital printing classes, alongside portfolio events and CPW’s annual photo auction and gala events in the early autumn.
A lot to swallow and attend? Ahh…not when you consider the joys of darkened observation and education, followed by enlightened conversation and inspiration. Which seems to mark all CPW events this time of year.
Make sure, for most lectures, to leave time on arrival to find a seat. These events do get crowded.++
For further information, including full bios and works by each teaching and lecturing artist, visit www.cpw.org. Or just stop by the Center at 59 Tinker Street, directly over Tannery Brook on the West side of town. Or call 679-9957.
Things that last
“My designs are inspired by the patterns and shapes I see in nature, such as the effects of wind on water, water on stone, or the arching of a tree’s branches,” writes the woodworker Josh Finn about the things he makes, which will be on view with the creations of other members of The Hudson Valley Furniture Makers at their first Summertime Exhibition and Sale at the Kleinert/James Arts Center, which opens with a reception this Friday, June 3 and runs through June 12. “Living in this era when everything is disposable, I find fulfillment in creating things that will last and be enjoyed for generations. Wood has warmth, diversity, and flexibility. Its lack of predictability provides challenges that man-made materials don’t. Each species of wood has qualities which suggest different uses. I enjoy recognizing the particular qualities in the wood and designing furniture which highlights them.”
Finn, based in High Falls, spent years apprenticing his skills, emulating a long tradition of fine craftsmen artists who look on the early years of the Byrdcliffe Colony, and subsequent Woodstock Guild — which is hosting this show at its in-town showcase gallery — as a beacon.
Showing alongside him will be leather- and tile-finish master John Cox, also of High Falls; sculptor/furniture designer Rob Hare of Ulster Park; master woodworker Andrew Hunter of Accord, whose elegant pieces of furniture show the magic of working without nails; SUNY New Paltz professor and kinetic furniture inventor Jeff Johnson; Fine Woodworking magazine Associate Editor Anissa Kapsales of Rosendale; Olive’s award-winning furniture designer Michael Puryear and classic Modernist Nicholas Simile, also of Rosendale.
The group came together in 2008 to share a love for the elegance of natural designs and fine craftsmanship, meticulous detail, and (hopefully) enduring beauty. In addition to commissioned works and a shared website, Hudson Valley Furniture Makers also holds a special three day autumn sale each October in Stone Ridge.
“As an artist, I design and create functional yet artful objects that are both formal and playful,” is how Johnson describes his works, which have included the bar at Artist’s Palate in Poughkeepsie, along with other wildly inventive pieces around the region. “My design sensibility merges concerns of utility, material and aesthetics to create unconventional yet useful everyday objects.”
Talk about an aesthetic surprisingly akin to that of the Arts & Crafts movement, and Ruskinian heirs, who first made Woodstock a center for the arts over a century ago.
“Driven by Design,” The Hudson Valley Furniture Makers first Summertime Exhibition and Sale, opens with a reception at the Kleinert/James Arts Center, 34 Tinker Street in Woodstock this Friday, June 3, from 7 p.m.-10 p.m. The Exhibition and Sale will then continue for the next two weekends through June 12, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.++
For further information visit www.hvfurnituremakers.com, or contact the Guild at either 679-2079 or www.woodstockguild.org.
Permanently WAAM
I’ve been meaning to make it to The Interior Life exhibit of works from the Permanent Collection at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum all Spring. I’d glimpsed in the room and seen a lot of close-focused paintings, drawings and etchings of homely scenes…and felt my kid tugging at my arm. Not now, Milo kept saying. And then this time came about, presently, where it’ll all be up for a single week more. And I can only say: wait no more. Go. You’ll need what it offers, as a collected vision of why we live here, as we share our special region with others over the coming months.
These are quiet, private views of what makes lives shine, what gets us all through our winters and rainy days. There are tables piled high with books, lit by sun filtered through curtained windows. Woodstoves and leaned-back chairs. People speaking with their friends and partners eyes deeply met and held. Back porch clutter, lovingly rendered (and remembered). A wife looking at picture books, playing piano by herself, or speaking with a close friend; lovers coming in the door, nude. Large, loving paintings of The Old Mantle, or a nude model leaning against a radiator in a softly-lit studio.
A few pieces portray elements of interior angst, and feel more modern than much of the pre-War work here. An early Rolph Scarlett shows nude men and women hovering in a room; John McClellan’s figures caught underground in mousetraps, or helping each other around an endless staircase overseen by an expressionless woman, seem ageless in their capturing of dream states.
Individual works mirror others, and all end up playing on an equally charged palette that goes beyond genres and styles, achieved fame or unrecognized talents. Konrad Cramer, in oil-on-composite board paintings, ink and wash drawings, and a host of careful photos, suddenly comes into perspective as a warm, contemplative bear of a man. Louis Bouche becomes a painter’s painter. The depths of George Bellows’ and Eugene Speicher’s friendship, as well as that of Philip Guston and Karl Fortess, is revealed in their images of each others wives, or the clutter of porches and other spaces they shared.
Wilna Hervey is seen from the outside in a moody portrait of her as a younger woman by Eva Watson-Schutze from the 20s, then from her own eyes out, via an oil-on-paper image of birds at a winter window, the very embodiment of the show’s overarching theme.
Bartow Matteson captures men in talk, while a Cramer drawing orders what gets him through dark times: with a woodstove, a radio on a chair, and a bed assembled by a window, their loving details balancing any adverse melancholy.
These are the images that match our memories of baking smells, a whiff of fading perfume, the sound of birdsong matched by a kettle’s rising alarm, or one’s wife’s tinkling of piano keys half a house away.
These are the elements of all our interior lives that make our public existences possible.++
The gallery is open daily excepting Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 28 Tinker Street in the center of Woodstock. Call 679-2940 or visit www.woodstockart.org for further information. It all shifts, again, after this Sunday, June 5.
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