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Silverdome Potentially SOLD!
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Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
Show of 10 Akron photographers’ works includes stunning portraits, fun take on grand landscapes
By Dorothy Shinn
Beacon Journal art and architecture writer
POSTED: 08:17 a.m. EDT, Oct 18, 2009
What's the state of photography in Akron? That's the question Andrew McAllister seeks to answer every couple of years when he mounts his biennial photography show.
The exhibit, Photo 2009: Selected Photography, is on view at Summit Artspace through Nov. 7 and consists of work by 10 photographers: Brian Babb, Laura Ruth Bidwell, Amy Koons, Janice Kreitz, McAllister, John P. Powers, Melissa K. Stallard, Arnold Tunstall, Daiv Whaley and Tanner Young.
Tunstall, Akron Art Museum collections manager, is known for his insightful urban scenes, taken mostly in Akron, New York and Chicago.
Here, Tunstall combines his skills and insights with quite a bit of serendipity in a group of seven images, four of which are taken with a toy Lomo camera and three with his trusty medium-format Mamiya.
While at first glance Tunstall's work may seem to be all about grids, he insists that this is not what the work is about.
''It's mostly about me walking around Akron, New York and Chicago and looking at the signage and finding unintentional juxtapositions that happen, like the giant woman and the 'Best Cheesecake in the World' sign, then the window of the magazine store that puts images of Hillary Clinton and Michael Jackson right next to beefcake magazines. It's all the same according to this guy — and 'BEER!' '' Tunstall noted, pointing to the window's signage. ''But that's America for you. That's part of it too.
''I've been thinking about it for the last nine years, the abundance, the indulgence, the 'too much' all over the country,'' he added. ''And yet you hear people complaining constantly.
He uses toy cameras because there's little control, as opposed to the ease of digital imaging and printing. ''It's a crapshoot, and you must shoot a lot of film just to get something you can print. That's just the opposite of my Mamiya that I've been using since graduate school and is just like part of my arm,'' he said.
Tunstall's preoccupation with American abundance is somewhat echoed in Tanner Young's images of the rooms he and his friends occupy in their parents' houses.
In his four large-format color images, he shows cluttered rooms, often with the person's face obscured.
''I felt like if you couldn't see the person, you would think of them as just another object in the room,'' Young explained. ''And the ones where you could see the faces, it's almost like the room revolves around them instead of them being part of a whole.''
These works are part of a series he's working on that he says is about how we arrange our lives and our stuff.
''I think my room out of all of them has the most layers to it, like the guy in the Zits cartoons, and just lots and lots of stuff. I've only met a few people my age who have a nice, organized space to live in, so chaos is sort of the aesthetic of my age, I'd say.''
John Powers, on the other hand, is of an age that prides itself in problem solving and organizational skills.
Because he works with a large-view camera, he's come up with a unique solution for hauling it around — a baby jogger, which causes no end of raised eyebrows when he takes it down the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail.
All four of Powers' images are taken along the new floating towpath bridge north of Wilbeth Road, and a couple of them concentrate on the Kenmore Boulevard bridge.
''I love all these stains coming down and the light that's coming through one half of the bridge,'' Powers confessed.
Powers' camera enables him to take extreme horizontal shots, giving his images an intense, compressed sense.
There's some burning and dodging going on and in at least one instance Powers' post-printing efforts are detectable. Master photographer/printer Ansel Adams did quite a bit of it himself — manipulating the exposure of certain areas of a print in order to make the areas darker or lighter. His secret was that he was extremely meticulous about it, even to the point of making two prints and cutting apart one to use as a mask for burning and dodging on its twin. That way there were never any telltale signs.
In The Anniversary, Laura Bidwell has created a stunning set of portraits of Akron cinematographer Ted Sikora and his family.
Taking as her point of departure Northern Renaissance paintings, in particular The Arnolfini Wedding by Jan Van Eyck, Bidwell created a series of portraits, closeups and vignettes using the Sikora family and their environs that also reflect the many different interpretations of The Arnolfini Wedding.
In keeping with the theme, Bidwell's images are rich, dense and layered in symbolism and concepts.
''I was sitting across from him at a dinner party one night, and it struck me how much he looked like a Northern Renaissance painting,'' Bidwell explained.
''I thought he might make a contemporary Arnolfini. He has an Arnolfini head, although he's much better looking, and I thought he just might be photogenic, although you never can tell until you get your subject in front of the camera. But I got lucky. He's very photogenic, as are his wife and child.''
Bidwell references the painting obliquely through the placement of her subjects, and through meticulous attention to detail, just as Van Eyck would have done were he working today.
''I found some material in that strange green that Van Eyck used for the woman's dress, and I made a dress for her,'' she said. ''I even made a jeweled pin for her to wear, because so many of the Van Eyck paintings have wonderful jeweled pins in them.''
She did an incredible amount of research on the work and discovered competing theories about its meaning: it's a marriage contract; it's a betrothal painting meant as an announcement of sorts to his relatives in Italy; it's a scene full of the symbols of domestic tranquility common in the 15th century; it's an advertisement of his wealth and standing; it's a loving memento mori of a dead wife for a living husband.
''Because this particular painting is so dissected and interpreted and written about, the books were all filled with these great detail shots. So I thought why not present this as literally pages from an art history book, complete with these romantic, interpretive captions?''
She even went so far as to buy a jigsaw puzzle of the Van Eyck painting and include it in one of the photographs.
Printed on an ink jet printer using Velvet Fine Art paper, the images are intensely pigmented and show detail beautifully.
''It becomes sort of a conceptual piece because you have two examples of it, the one before you and the one in your mind,'' Bidwell reflected.
McAllister's photographs are landscapes that he took in the American Southwest, some of which are spoofs on tourists taking pictures of famous scenes they're familiar with from other photographs.
''This is a series I started a number of years ago,'' McAllister said. ''Its working title is Looking at the West.
''It's about the Western landscape and how we experience it. Not only am I looking at the West, but I'm looking at other people looking at the West.
''Everyone out there has a camera, and everyone's looking at scenes. So part of going to the West is to take pictures.''
Not only does McAllister take pictures of tourists taking pictures, he does it at the wrong time of day — midday — just as tourists do, not at the magic hours of early morning as professional photographers would.
And he also goes to all the tourist spots: Sedona, Monument Valley, the Moab Desert, Arches National Park.
''Probably a million 'calendar shots' have been taken there,'' he shrugged. ''As a fine art photographer going to a bunch of national parks, what can I do that hasn't already been done? If I can get past the stock images, I can move way beyond that.''
This exhibit, which is always shown at Summit Artspace, has not quite taken on the patina of old-home week with the participating photographers, but it may soon get there.
For, as several of them noted when I met with them last week, most (if not all) in the exhibit are students of University of Akron Photography Professor Penny Rakoff, and some of them even go back to Irving Achorn, who, back in the 1970s and 1980s, required his students to learn many of the original early methods of photographic development and printing.
In spite of the cozy dynamics, McAllister has put together a rigorously selected and visually lovely show, and its 10 participants have each turned in conceptually challenging images.
But it occurred to me that Northeast Ohio is home to many well-known photographers, several of whom are famous for their stunning landscape and wildlife photography, who are nonetheless absent from this show.
Perhaps these photographers, many of whom are commercially successful, feel they no longer have time for group shows such as this. Or perhaps there's a feeling among the fine art photographers that there's too much commercialism in the work of their famous brethren.
It is nevertheless obvious that the question of the state of Akron photography can't be truly answered unless McAllister's group widens its base.
However, the existing exhibit is certainly a delight and a reassuring indication of where at least one segment of Northeast Ohio photography is headed.
Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.
DETAILS
Show: Photo 2009: Selected Photography, a biennial show curated by Andrew McAllister
When: Through Nov. 7, noon to 5 p.m. Thursday-Saturday
Where: Summit Artspace, 140 E. Market St., Akron
Information: 330-376-8480 or http://www.summitartspace.org
What's the state of photography in Akron? That's the question Andrew McAllister seeks to answer every couple of years when he mounts his biennial photography show.
The exhibit, Photo 2009: Selected Photography, is on view at Summit Artspace through Nov. 7 and consists of work by 10 photographers: Brian Babb, Laura Ruth Bidwell, Amy Koons, Janice Kreitz, McAllister, John P. Powers, Melissa K. Stallard, Arnold Tunstall, Daiv Whaley and Tanner Young.
Tunstall, Akron Art Museum collections manager, is known for his insightful urban scenes, taken mostly in Akron, New York and Chicago.
Here, Tunstall combines his skills and insights with quite a bit of serendipity in a group of seven images, four of which are taken with a toy Lomo camera and three with his trusty medium-format Mamiya.
While at first glance Tunstall's work may seem to be all about grids, he insists that this is not what the work is about.
''It's mostly about me walking around Akron, New York and Chicago and looking at the signage and finding unintentional juxtapositions that happen, like the giant woman and the 'Best Cheesecake in the World' sign, then the window of the magazine store that puts images of Hillary Clinton and Michael Jackson right next to beefcake magazines. It's all the same according to this guy — and 'BEER!' '' Tunstall noted, pointing to the window's signage. ''But that's America for you. That's part of it too.
''I've been thinking about it for the last nine years, the abundance, the indulgence, the 'too much' all over the country,'' he added. ''And yet you hear people complaining constantly.
He uses toy cameras because there's little control, as opposed to the ease of digital imaging and printing. ''It's a crapshoot, and you must shoot a lot of film just to get something you can print. That's just the opposite of my Mamiya that I've been using since graduate school and is just like part of my arm,'' he said.
Tunstall's preoccupation with American abundance is somewhat echoed in Tanner Young's images of the rooms he and his friends occupy in their parents' houses.
In his four large-format color images, he shows cluttered rooms, often with the person's face obscured.
''I felt like if you couldn't see the person, you would think of them as just another object in the room,'' Young explained. ''And the ones where you could see the faces, it's almost like the room revolves around them instead of them being part of a whole.''
These works are part of a series he's working on that he says is about how we arrange our lives and our stuff.
''I think my room out of all of them has the most layers to it, like the guy in the Zits cartoons, and just lots and lots of stuff. I've only met a few people my age who have a nice, organized space to live in, so chaos is sort of the aesthetic of my age, I'd say.''
John Powers, on the other hand, is of an age that prides itself in problem solving and organizational skills.
Because he works with a large-view camera, he's come up with a unique solution for hauling it around — a baby jogger, which causes no end of raised eyebrows when he takes it down the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail.
All four of Powers' images are taken along the new floating towpath bridge north of Wilbeth Road, and a couple of them concentrate on the Kenmore Boulevard bridge.
''I love all these stains coming down and the light that's coming through one half of the bridge,'' Powers confessed.
Powers' camera enables him to take extreme horizontal shots, giving his images an intense, compressed sense.
There's some burning and dodging going on and in at least one instance Powers' post-printing efforts are detectable. Master photographer/printer Ansel Adams did quite a bit of it himself — manipulating the exposure of certain areas of a print in order to make the areas darker or lighter. His secret was that he was extremely meticulous about it, even to the point of making two prints and cutting apart one to use as a mask for burning and dodging on its twin. That way there were never any telltale signs.
In The Anniversary, Laura Bidwell has created a stunning set of portraits of Akron cinematographer Ted Sikora and his family.
Taking as her point of departure Northern Renaissance paintings, in particular The Arnolfini Wedding by Jan Van Eyck, Bidwell created a series of portraits, closeups and vignettes using the Sikora family and their environs that also reflect the many different interpretations of The Arnolfini Wedding.
In keeping with the theme, Bidwell's images are rich, dense and layered in symbolism and concepts.
''I was sitting across from him at a dinner party one night, and it struck me how much he looked like a Northern Renaissance painting,'' Bidwell explained.
''I thought he might make a contemporary Arnolfini. He has an Arnolfini head, although he's much better looking, and I thought he just might be photogenic, although you never can tell until you get your subject in front of the camera. But I got lucky. He's very photogenic, as are his wife and child.''
Bidwell references the painting obliquely through the placement of her subjects, and through meticulous attention to detail, just as Van Eyck would have done were he working today.
''I found some material in that strange green that Van Eyck used for the woman's dress, and I made a dress for her,'' she said. ''I even made a jeweled pin for her to wear, because so many of the Van Eyck paintings have wonderful jeweled pins in them.''
She did an incredible amount of research on the work and discovered competing theories about its meaning: it's a marriage contract; it's a betrothal painting meant as an announcement of sorts to his relatives in Italy; it's a scene full of the symbols of domestic tranquility common in the 15th century; it's an advertisement of his wealth and standing; it's a loving memento mori of a dead wife for a living husband.
''Because this particular painting is so dissected and interpreted and written about, the books were all filled with these great detail shots. So I thought why not present this as literally pages from an art history book, complete with these romantic, interpretive captions?''
She even went so far as to buy a jigsaw puzzle of the Van Eyck painting and include it in one of the photographs.
Printed on an ink jet printer using Velvet Fine Art paper, the images are intensely pigmented and show detail beautifully.
''It becomes sort of a conceptual piece because you have two examples of it, the one before you and the one in your mind,'' Bidwell reflected.
McAllister's photographs are landscapes that he took in the American Southwest, some of which are spoofs on tourists taking pictures of famous scenes they're familiar with from other photographs.
''This is a series I started a number of years ago,'' McAllister said. ''Its working title is Looking at the West.
''It's about the Western landscape and how we experience it. Not only am I looking at the West, but I'm looking at other people looking at the West.
''Everyone out there has a camera, and everyone's looking at scenes. So part of going to the West is to take pictures.''
Not only does McAllister take pictures of tourists taking pictures, he does it at the wrong time of day — midday — just as tourists do, not at the magic hours of early morning as professional photographers would.
And he also goes to all the tourist spots: Sedona, Monument Valley, the Moab Desert, Arches National Park.
''Probably a million 'calendar shots' have been taken there,'' he shrugged. ''As a fine art photographer going to a bunch of national parks, what can I do that hasn't already been done? If I can get past the stock images, I can move way beyond that.''
This exhibit, which is always shown at Summit Artspace, has not quite taken on the patina of old-home week with the participating photographers, but it may soon get there.
For, as several of them noted when I met with them last week, most (if not all) in the exhibit are students of University of Akron Photography Professor Penny Rakoff, and some of them even go back to Irving Achorn, who, back in the 1970s and 1980s, required his students to learn many of the original early methods of photographic development and printing.
In spite of the cozy dynamics, McAllister has put together a rigorously selected and visually lovely show, and its 10 participants have each turned in conceptually challenging images.
But it occurred to me that Northeast Ohio is home to many well-known photographers, several of whom are famous for their stunning landscape and wildlife photography, who are nonetheless absent from this show.
Perhaps these photographers, many of whom are commercially successful, feel they no longer have time for group shows such as this. Or perhaps there's a feeling among the fine art photographers that there's too much commercialism in the work of their famous brethren.
It is nevertheless obvious that the question of the state of Akron photography can't be truly answered unless McAllister's group widens its base.
However, the existing exhibit is certainly a delight and a reassuring indication of where at least one segment of Northeast Ohio photography is headed.
Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.
DETAILS
Show: Photo 2009: Selected Photography, a biennial show curated by Andrew McAllister
When: Through Nov. 7, noon to 5 p.m. Thursday-Saturday
Where: Summit Artspace, 140 E. Market St., Akron
Information: 330-376-8480 or http://www.summitartspace.org
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