Rockingham Times

‘Showing Up’

Five NH Art Association photographers merge ideas in joint exhibit

 

PORTSMOUTH – Five New Hampshire Art Association photographers have been sharing their ideas and works for 10 years, and will exhibit together, during the month of October at the NHAA’s Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery.

 

The five artists – Norman Desfosses, Sarah Flause, Jay Goldsmith, Richard Moore and Carol Van Loon – have separately titled each of their bodies of work for the show as it is not a cohesive theme. It is rather five shows within one exhibit.

 

“For 10 years now, we few, we happy few, have met once a month to speak photography,” aid Goldsmith. “We discuss our work, our progress, our problems, and we critique – nicely – the pieces we’re all currently working on, inspiring and learning from one another.”

 

Goldsmith said that while the five are relatively the same age, their work is rather wide-ranging.

 

“We meet at 5 p.m., have a drink, and spend two hours discussing the state of the world and our latest additions to it,” he said. “We have no dues and no by-laws and no preconceived expectations. We have but one rule – if we can’t all show up, we don’t meet. We reschedule, although that hardly ever happens.”

 

Let’s meet the artists.

 

Norman Desfosses

Desfosses’s show is titled, “The spirit of nature.”

 

“My curiosity with plants goes back to my youth—walking in the city,” he said. I clearly remember regarding the effort put out by nature to grow through concrete walls and sidewalks. I’m still attracted to this never-ending dance—the transition from seed to earth and back again. For this show, I’ve chosen random moments from what I’ve observed.”

 

For almost 60 years, Desfosses has used photography to reveal how essential light is to form. From a mother’s Brownie to an iPhone; the magic of the darkroom process to pigment ink on handmade paper; teachers, students, a muse, and family—all have helped him make the images he shows.

 

 

Sarah Flause

Sarah Flause is a fine art photographer from the seacoast area of New Hampshire. She focuses primarily on historic architecture and artifacts, landscapes and still life.

 

Flause titled her body of work, “Sagas from a Rugged, Lonely Place.”

 

“North of England, north of Scotland, north of Orkney, between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea lie the Shetland Islands,” she said. “In the ninth century. the Vikings invaded from Scandinavia entirely replacing the existing population.”

 

Flause said her family is from these islands, and she traveled to this “rugged, lonely place to spend time among its ruins.”

 

“This series of images visualizes some of the ancient Viking sagas, which tell the mythological stories of my own ancestors’ polytheistic beliefs,” she said.

 

Jay Goldsmith

Goldsmith titled his work for the exhibit, “Beach Stones.”

 

“For the better part of a year, I drove several times a week to Harbor Beach in York, Maine,” he said. “I became fascinated with the beautiful patterns and colors in the rock formations to be found there.”

 

These photographs, from those sessions, are printed in platinum/palladium, a process whereby those two metals are embedded within the fibers of the paper. Though these are grayscale prints, the striking colors within the rocks come into play by manipulating the colors slightly when making the black and white negative.

 

 

Richard Moore

Moore’s body of work is titled, “Urban Wildscapes” – urban landscapes without people.

 

“I am imagining what would remain if we were all gone, what transformation of human and non-human structures would begin,” he said. “This is a project encountered over the last two years, as we moved from the country to a city in the time of COVID.”

 

Printing on birchbark transforms the photographic image. The waterproof bark resists the ink. Detail bleeds away, and the image is etched with the texture of the bark. Time is transformed; the print is already old, flaking away in the endless cycle of becoming.

 

Carol Van Loon

Van Loon’s show is titled, “The Crinoline,” depicting her in various environments dressed in a crinoline skirt.

 

“What is a 60-plus woman doing prancing about in a crinoline skirt?,” asks Van Loon. “It was fun – sometimes I felt sexy, other times it was just ha-ha take that. Swathed in crinoline I could be that self I imagined myself to be not who faced me in the bathroom mirror every morning.”

 

At some point during COVID, Van Loon was told that she would be on a spiritual path for the rest of my life, no constraints.

 

“After seeing a photograph by a self portrait photographer I follow wrapped in lace, it struck me. I went searching for a crinoline skirt,” she said. “So much for constraints.”

 

“Something I could do alone, though I did have help with a few of these images,” she said. “I was always available. It has a bit of fun. I have discovered that I have very photographic feet, I don’t need to photograph my “older” face, the crinoline hid my aging body with its fluff. I could be 32 again.”

 

After looking at some of the images a friend told Van Loon she was rockin’ it.

 

“My last fling as a woman of a certain age?,” she said. “I fear not.”

 

GO & DO

“Showing Up,” – five NH Art Association photographers’ works: Norman Desfosses, Sarah Flause, Jay Goldsmith, Richard Moore and Carol Van Loon

Where: Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery, 136 State Street, Portsmouth, NH, and online at www.nhartassociation.org

When:  Oct. 5 through Oct. 30. Opening reception on Oct. 7 from 5 to 8 p.m.

Gallery hours: Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m.

SHOWN: “Odin, the Father God,” by Sarah Flause

Original source can be found here.