Saturday, September 26, 2009

Photographs: Water

I have been taking photographs of the Mississippi River as part of Project Art for Nature for the last year and a half. These photos have been resources for my paintings of the Mississippi, but I have come to enjoy the photos so much that I am framing them and hanging them in the PAN exhibit at the University of Minnesota at Morris. Displayed here are three of the seven photos.
Each PAN artist must choose two natural areas in which to work. My first site is the Mississippi River Gorge located between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul. My second site is the Review Islands on Rainy Lake along the Minnesota/Canada border, a protected grouping of four islands owned by the Oberholtzer Foundation. Both sites are defined by water and have been created by erosion from volumes of water rushing past rock as well as each tiny wave and ripple slowly lapping against shore. These three photos deal with ripples as pattern on the surface of water. One starts to sense the rugged surface of water which grates away the land. There is also a sense of the volume of water underneath this surface that is at work.

I took my photos and did very little in terms of editing or changing them for this exhibit. I just tweeked the contrast a little. They are framed in black metal frames with a ragboard matte. The prints themselves are on matte heavyweight archival paper. I did not want the sheen of photopaper as I felt that a matte paper would communicate the volume and density of the water better.

If you are in the Morris area between October 22 and November 27 please stop in and see the show. There are ten other wonderful artists in the exhibit and it promises to be quite a show.

No comments:

Post a Comment