Local Photographer Travels to Romania, Lives Daily Life of Peasant Ancestors
For 25 years, local photographer Emily Matyas captured the Mexican spirit and heritage on film while living in Sonora, Mexico. In October, she decided it was time to catalogue her own heritage, a journey that would take her to the distant peasant villages of Romania.
Image “Morning in the Beautiful Room” by Emily Matyas
For Tempe photographer Emily Matyas, her deceased father’s Romanian heritage was always a mystery, a missing piece in the puzzle of her sense of self. In Oct. 2013, she decided it was time to fill in the blanks.
With friend and fellow photographer Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin, an adjunct professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Emily made her way to the Romanian village of Sarbi, where she would spend 10 days taking self-portraits as she lived the life of her peasant ancestors — wearing the traditional garb, helping with the exhausting chores, and interacting with the locals.
“I decided to photograph myself as if I were my grandmother, as if I had lived there all my life,” Emily said. “You can hear all the stories you want about your relatives, but when you actually go and experience their lives, it is a totally different level of understanding.”
Though Emily admits she often felt like a fish out of water living in a village of outhouses, haystacks and ancient customs, she said the trip helped her understand her identity more fully.
“This experience had to do with belonging,” said Matyas. “I had to find out where I belonged and this trip made me feel complete. If people have questions about their heritage or identity, then these photos may represent a way to find what they are looking for.”
People will have the chance to view Emily’s photographs, along with seven other up-and-coming photographers, during “Home Bound,” an art exhibition Jan. 17 to Feb. 28 at Gilbert’s Art Intersection (207 North Gilbert Road, Suite 201, Gilbert).
“The exhibition looks at the main differences of perspective on what we think of as home,” said “Home Bound” Curator Carol Panaro-Smith. “The work is full of beauty, but also makes us think about our home, experience and heritage.”
Other photographers featured will include LA-based artist Kristin Bedford, whose images of the “Father Divine” religious sect were recently featured in the New York Times, and Daniel Coburn, a Kansas-based photographer whose first book “The Hereditary Estate” is due for release April 14.
“People are bound to home, for better or for worse,” said Matyas. “I would hope that the viewers can take away different meanings of home that support and guide them in their lives.”
The Art Intersection Staff selected three artists from eighty-nine artists in the Light Sensitive exhibition, our signature traditional photography exhibition, to have their own exhibition called “Best of Light Sensitive 2014”. This year Tom Persigner, photographer, writer, and the founder of F295, juried Light Sensitive and selected work for the exhibition in March and April, 2014. Images from Light Sensitive 2014.
Douglas Collins – I make photographs without using a camera – or, in the case of these works, without even a darkroom. In my work I reject accepted forms of photographic meaning, but try instead to create moments of lucidity through a meditation on form and intention. This tends to minimalistic results, and the pictures are often purified of all but essential structure. I set my own rules but often live by violating them. In place of traditional approaches I invest in a deep contemplation on the physical materials of the photographic act itself, in the tradition of Fox Talbot. I live and work in New York City.
These works are chemigrams, a type of photographic art made without a camera and without a darkroom. In this process, black and white photographic paper is exposed to daylight and then is coated with a varnish, which functions as a resist. By soaking the paper in fixer and developer alternately, the resist is gradually lifted, and color is created by the physical effects on silver grains in the emulsion that result from a certain rhythm of soaking. The artist may intervene, attacking the paper with knives, sticks, or hands to induce additional imagery. The process has antecedents going back to the origin of photography.
Mary Donato – Following my retirement in 2006 after 30 years as a research geologist, I began to explore photography and printmaking as ways to satisfy both my analytical and creative impulses. I have no formal training in fine art or photography, nor was I given a vintage camera by an aging relative when I was a child. Nevertheless, I consider myself a fully-engaged amateur photographer and printmaker who combines 21st-century digital devices with 19th-century printing processes to create handmade photographic images.
I am compelled to explore the ephemeral beauty of everyday life, sometimes in deliberate compositions, but more often in incidental situations. These prints display a range of scale and chroma. They represent my efforts to convey a mood or a visual idea, and nothing more. Producing unique prints by hand seems the perfect approach for such imagery.
Erin K Malone – Located in San Francisco, California, Erin Malone spends her days as a User Experience Design Consultant while wishing she was out in the field with her cameras. She received her first camera at 10 and taking it to Girl Scout camp, she promptly left it behind.
A few years later and being much more responsible, she purchased her first manual SLR. Photo classes in high school and serving on the newspaper as a photographer, began her foray into “real” photography.
Coming full circle, Erin primarily works with film, vintage, plastic and lensless cameras and in historic and alternative processes.
Erin’s photos have been shown in group and juried exhibitions across the United States, they have won several awards and are in a few collections, including the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. Her work has been featured in publications such as B&W Magazine, Diffusion, Light Leaks and San Francisco Magazine and the San Francisco PBS produced program KQED Quest.
About the Juror
Tom Persinger is a photographer, writer, and the founder of F295. His photographs have been shown in numerous exhibitions and are in private collections in the United States, Europe, and Japan. His work has been featured in many publications, including Afterimage, Ag, Photo.net, View Camera, and many books on photographic technique and processing.
Persinger has lectured at colleges and universities, leads hands-on workshops, and is a member of Freestyle Photographic’s Advisory Board of Photographic Professionals. His first book Photography Beyond Technique: Essays from F295 on the Informed use of Alternative and Historical Photographic Processes will be released by Focal Press/Taylor and Francis in Spring 2014.
He is especially interested in contemporary photography that considers in its manufacture the intersections of process, subject, and content and the work that can be created in that exciting intersection. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons.
Learn the basics of the wet plate collodion process using glass as the substrate, and create two direct positives images!
Students in this workshop, led by Claire Warden, will go through the process of cleaning glass plates, coating the plates with collodion, sensitizing, exposing, processing and varnishing the final image.
Images will be captured on 4″ x 5″ plates using a large format camera in the lab, and all materials are included to create two ambrotypes.
Recently, Claire spent a summer creating ambrotypes in Lehon, France, and she brings her wet glass plate collodion experience to this workshop.
The Friday preceding the workshop, Claire will give a free to the public lecture about ambrotypes and her experience in Lehon.
On Sunday, following the Saturday workshop, Claire will be on-hand in the lab to assist with the anyone wishing to make additional glass plate images.
A group exhibition, FAMILY MATTERS, revisited explores familial relationships through the vision of photographers who share personal perspectives on their own families whether as documentation or metaphor. Through images they explore intimate family dynamics, cultural traditions, painful and joyful memories, bonds of support and love, as well as challenging issues of illness, prejudice, abuse and addiction.
Artist Talks
Join us for in the gallery for Coburn’s intimate artist talk and a discussion about forgiveness on Tuesday, Oct 28 at 6:30 pm
Come share family stories with Miranda after her artist talk in the gallery on Tuesday, Nov 18 at 6:30 pm
FAMILY MATTERS, revisited features Daniel Coburn’s Domestic Reliquary in which he uses vernacular photographs to represent personal family dynamics. By portraying his own family’s dark history through the use of found images, he speaks about personal struggles, quiet suffering and a gradual healing from the past. Coburn reproduces these images using the salted paper process and then applies paint or sews into the print. He earned his MFA from the University of New Mexico and is currently a professor of Photo Media at the University of Kansas. Daniel W. Coburn
In Karen Miranda’s series Other Histories/Historias Bravas, she reenacts memories from her childhood in which she collaborates with members of her family, often her mother and her aunt, to explore issues concerning her bi-cultural background growing up in Ecuador and the US. She says the images “provide a means for reflection and a search for truthfulness.” Miranda’s act of handwriting her diaristic titles directly onto the print welcomes the viewer into her intimate space and invites us to reflect on our own personal histories. Karen Miranda
Other artists featured in the exhibition include Sean Black, Jess Dugan, Annie Lopez, Marivi Ortiz, Hillerbrand + Magsamen and H. Jennings Sheffield.
Curator: Liz Allen
School of Art
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
Mom healing me from my fear of iguanas by Karen Miranda
Starting Friday evening and working through Sunday, the workshop students learned about creating digital negatives for platinum/palladium, chemistry, and then made prints in the alt process lab.
Keith shared his expertise with the class and showed the process he uses to make palladium and platinum prints. You may remember Keith’s work on exhibit in the North Gallery along with Dick Arentz this past January and February during the Art Intersection Platinum/Palladium exhibition.
Checking the first digital negatives for densities and checking exposure times.
Keith concentrating on building and explaining digital negatives and Quad Tone RIP.
Discussing paper choices.
Ready to print.
Coating Arches Platine with a glass rod.
Time to expose.
High tech or low tech, it’s all about UV light.
Pouring on the developer.
Trying the cold tone developer.
Clearing.
In the final wash.
Final prints drying before going to the critique wall.
Some of the dry prints on the critique wall. Others were still too wet to show by the end of the workshop.
The opening of Eternal Platinum marks Art Intersection’s third anniversary. Our first exhibition on January 17, 2011 was Out of the Blue: Contemporary Cyanotype Invitational. Once again we went to a traditional process that offers a unique, and distinctive presentation of an image. On exhibition in the North and South Galleries are exquisite works from artists that have not been shown before at Art Intersection.
A platinum print is an exceptionally beautiful and everlasting image presented through a wide range of subtle tones. The creation of a contemporary platinum print, whether from film or digital camera, remains an intimate, handcrafted process. The artist begins by hand coating an art paper with a platinum or platinum/palladium solution, exposing the sensitized paper to ultra-violet light, and then hand processing the exposed paper to create the final, permanent print. No two prints are ever identical.
This exhibition is in conjunction with PhotoTapas, celebrating the art of photography in Arizona during the month of February.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Dick Arentz
Scott B. Davis, courtesy of Etherton Gallery
Joy Goldkind, courtesy of Tilt Gallery
Charles Grogg, courtesy of Etherton Gallery
David Johndrow
Stan Klimek
Andrea Modica, courtesy of Tilt Gallery
Jean-Claude Mougin, courtesy of Tilt Gallery
Keith Schreiber
RYAN GALLERY
This year begins an expansion of our gallery program to include the representation of artists who will be shown in Ryan Gallery. The East Gallery has been renamed the Ryan Gallery and will serve as the space for presentation of works by the represented artists. During Eternal Platinum in the Ryan Gallery, with platinum prints, are the following artists:
Michael T. Puff
Ryuijie
Terry Towery
In the future we will show the works of additional represented artists with prints produced in the darkroom using processes including cyanotype, gelatin silver, kallitype, etc.
IMAGES FROM THE OPENING
Below are the incredibly nice parents of Charles Grogg, standing in front of one of four images by Charles.
Jim and Carol standing in front of work by Dick Arentz. Carol worked through much of last year to curate this show. She worked directly with the artists, as well as two Arizona galleries to bring this work to Art Intersection. Thank you Carol for a great job. Also, thank you to Tilt Gallery and Etherton Gallery for making this work available to Art Intersection.
Two close friends of Art Intersection, David Emitt Adams and Rosie Shipley. Rosie will be the juror for our upcoming student photography exhibition, Emerge. Thank you Rosie. David was the juror for last year’s Emerge exhibition.
Randy Efros, well know photographer and arts patron joined us. One of his images hangs permanently at Art Intersection.
Mark and Becky Godfrey and Chris Palmer and Tammy Cowden never miss an opening. Mark’s company Parker Madison is the marketing firm for Art Intersection. Both Chris and Tammy have had their work on exhibition at Art Intersection in the past.
Jamie Fitzgerald, Debra Wilson, and Alan Fitzgerald in the Ryan Gallery. Debra works behind the scene at Art Intersection making sure the bills are paid and the business pieces stay organized. Jamie practices acupuncture nearby at The Healing Point. Alan, well we’re not sure what he does, but he drinks most of the coffee.
James Hajicek and Mary Kay Zeeb discussing the platinum process. Jim taught the non-silver curriculum at ASU, and was a professor there for over 30 years. Mary Kay teaches, and is an instructor for the Italy Workshop.
Neil Miller and Marilyn Miller never miss an opening or event at Art Intersection. As always Neil has his camera around his neck, but tonight it’s different, he is shooting with an infra-red flash and filter. He will co-instruct the upcoming infra-red workshop.
North Gallery with Dick Arentz and Keith Schreiber.
South Gallery with Scott B. Davis, Charles Grogg, David Johndrow, Stan Klemick, Andrea Modica, and Jean-Claude Mougin.
Ryan Gallery with Michael T. Puff, Ryuijie, and Terry Towery.
Each year Art Intersection invites artists to submit work for consideration in Light Sensitive, a national juried exhibition of analog photography. This annual exhibition celebrates the traditional methods of making images in the darkroom. Past work has included c-prints, platinum, cyanotype, gelatin silver, gum bichromate, wet plate collodion tintypes, and other printing processes. While the final print must be made using analog techniques the use of computer generated digital negatives/positives in the creation of the print is acceptable.
In our May exhibition Art Intersection presents the work of emerging student talent ranging from high school to graduate students. We are dedicated to supporting students in their educational pursuits of self-expression through photography and congratulate each student for their unique vision and dedication to their craft. Through a jury process Art Intersection selects a variety of work from the photography students at high school, college, and university educational institutions across Arizona.
Art Intersection celebrates all forms of visual art with this juried exhibition from Arizona artists. Artists submit images of their work ranging from sculpture, photography, painting, ceramics, mixed media, artist books, and more in this juried exhibition juried by the Art Intersection curatorial staff.
No Strangers – The Art Intersection Creative Community embraces the diversity of Art Intersection alliances. This eclectic exhibition combines work from Art Intersection members and collaborating artists. This exhibition celebrates a very special part of our growing community, our members, staff, and faculty.
Exhibit your work by sharing your portfolio and view the work of other members in the Art Intersection members’ portfolio sharing event. Each member has a table space about 3′ x 6′ to show their work. Viewing is open to the public.
The opening reception for WORD UP: artists using language and Abstracted by J. Barry Thomson kicked off our fall season programming block of Art & Language.
In the galleries you’ll find so much interesting work, plan to stay for at least an hour. In additional to three galleries full of a variety of media, you can come into the east gallery and spend some time looking at-and yes- handling, a wide variety of artists’ books.
Here’s a link to our Facebook photo album where you can see images of the opening and selected pieces from the exhibitions.
Please visit our website to look at our fall line-up of classes, lectures, workshops and MORE!
Tags: gallery, exhibition Posted in Event Recaps |
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“I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort, where we overlap.” ― Ani DiFranco
The doors of Art Intersection opened in January of 2011 with a belief that in order for human creativity to flourish – it being perhaps one of our most important saving graces – nourishment is required on many fronts. In order to support the creative spirit of all those individuals within physical range of its facilities and programming, a well-equipped and well-staffed facility was made available to any and to all who wanted to engage in further developing their own creativity.
This exhibition celebrates a very special part of our growing community, our members, staff, and faculty.With our membership, we wanted to create a lively atmosphere for interesting dialogue and networking, a place to share work, and to learn not only from the stellar faculty and staff but also from each other. Through group critiques, one on ones with our curator and special member events we have begun forging a true creative community.
The staff and faculty of Art Intersection are also committed artists and feel honored to have their work intersecting with the work of the members in this inaugural exhibition devoted to learning, creating, and sharing. For more images visit our Facebook page.
Hundreds of people turned out for the opening reception of All Art Arizona on Saturday evening, June 2nd. There were many opportunities for the public to engage with the artists and for connections to be made within the community. One artist, Lynn Thomson, was exhibiting her iphoneography abstract images for the first time in a gallery setting. She enjoyed the interaction with her audience and the feedback they provided. She was impressed at the opening with the way the variety of work came together and flowed through the space.
Overall, the opening for All Art Arizona was a huge success. The event was a wonderful beginning of a 2 month-long celebration of all forms of art, and an important cultural milestone for Gilbert and the East Valley Community.
The curatorial staff selected 76 works from over 300 that were submitted. It was a difficult process in that we not only wanted to open this exhibition to a wider range of visual media than usually exhibited, but we also wanted to include the largest possible range of levels of experience from student artists to accomplished masters in one exhibition. The gallery features a multitude of different mediums from, painting to drawing, fibers, mixed media, photography, and sculpture.
All Art Arizona is a testament to Art Intersection’s commitment to being a truly professional exhibition space of the highest order while at the same time creating opportunities for artists of all experience levels to be able to complete their artistic process which includes the final stage of bringing their work before a public audience.
Now showing through July 28, 2012, Tuesday through Saturday from 10am-6pm. Free and open to the public. For more pictures of the opening visit our Facebook.
