|
|
|
Growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia, the maple tree in our front yard offered me an ideal perch from which to view the changing seasons. Passersby did not see me, and it was as though I became invisible and merged with the tree. The central limbs were offset in a perfect configuration to safely support me. The color and texture of the tree’s bark under shifting light of the changing seasons is etched in my memory. In early spring, the delicate, new leaves unfolded, spread, and deepened in color. During fall as temperatures dropped, the leaves transitioned from green with yellow tipped leaves to translucent yellow. Autumn wind rustled the tree, the leaves shivered, released, and fluttered to the grass below creating new patterns. I loved that tree.
Precious time outside exploring nature’s rhythms and patterns nourished me in ways that nothing else could. With my neighbor’s dog, I explored small pockets of undeveloped land that included streams, fields and bluffs that later became auto dealer parking lots. We walked among the trees that lined the perimeter of my elementary school property that shared a high, sturdy fence with the neighboring property, an eerily quiet complex. More recently, I learned that cyclotron research was located there.
While admiring qualities of light and wondering at the majesty of nature, I remember the rhythmic, swooping sound of a helicopter as its tandem rotors sliced through the calm, suburban air. For years, the hulking, green Chinook helicopters approached, circled, and returned to the nearby Boeing Vertol manufacturing facility for continued testing. Teflon and nonstick pans were enthusiastically marketed for food preparation in the modern, yet isolated lab-like kitchens. Children gleefully, raced their bikes into the billowing fog clouds behind the DDT trucks intended to control mosquitos.
Since that time, a steady evolving tension and tipping of a fragile balance of nature has occurred. Human amplified climate change is contributing to record temperatures, an accelerating pattern of extreme weather patterns and devastating floods and wildfires. We are learning how to cope and develop resilience in the face of challenges posed by climate change and the global pandemic. I hope that our perspective matures to a point where we fully recognize the fragility of this blue planet and work to develop clarity, connect and make wise choices as we care for our environment.
The Pandemic offered me the opportunity to explore trails in Woodward Park, Yosemite National Park, Asilomar State Park and Edison Lake a few weeks before the Creek Fire began. This exploration enabled me to see the effects our choices make on our environment. Photographs in the exhibit were made during 2020 and 2021.
Joan K. Sharma received an MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington and a BFA from Temple University’s, Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. She studied for a year in Rome, Italy and a summer at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has lived in Switzerland and traveled extensively throughout the US, Europe, India, and Bhutan. These experiences increased her appreciation for the diversity and interconnectedness of our global community. Sharma joined the Department of Art and Design, California State University, Fresno in 2003. She co-directed two travel-study programs to India. Her photographs received awards from the International Photography Awards IPA, juried exhibitions in 2016, 2018 and 2019. Sharma’s work has been exhibited internationally in numerous solo, juried and group exhibitions and at the Fresno Art Museum, Spectrum Gallery, Gallery 25, Gallery 1825, Arte Americas and is in private and public collections.
In my dual role as President of the Board of Directors and currently exhibiting artist, I would like to bring attention first to the effort of the base team that is responsible for helping to make the recent fund-raising auction a success. Despite the setback of the Covid-related pandemic, we have also secured several grants to help fund our operation, and have re-opened our doors to the public. My message is one of hope that as citizens of Earth, we recognize our part in the overcoming of contagious diseases and unjust treatment of our planet and our fellow human beings. A new word has come to mind; something everyone should consider – ‘pandempathy’.
During the winter of 2020, more than 40% of Americans reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, double the rate of the previous year. That number dropped to 30% in June 2021 as vaccinations rose and Covid-19 cases fell, but that still leaves nearly one in three Americans struggling with their mental health. In addition to diagnosable symptoms, plenty of people reported experiencing pandemic brain fog, including forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, and general fuzziness. Americans are slowly coming out of the pandemic, but as they reemerge, there’s still much trauma to process. Continued caution must be exercised as the Delta and other variants continue to spread. It’s not just our families, communities, and jobs that have changed; our brains have changed too. We are not the same people we were 18 months ago.
“EASE ~ finding one’s place” is the title of a solo exhibition of my art to be held during the month of August 2021 at the SPECTRUM Art Gallery in Fresno, CA.
The overall political tension of the populace during the last four to five years, and most especially during the last year, in which just about everything changed due to the COVID 19 corona virus, has given us a great need/cause for EASE. With new patterns of behavior having been mandated to ensure our safety, we started wearing masks to protect ourselves and others, we employed social distancing and seclusion. As an artist, I have always valued my undisturbed time alone in the studio. As a social human being, I crave interaction with others. In my time spent alone, I found myself inspired to affirm my personal space and place based on location, to create a significance of place interspersed with these current conditions and various aspects of personal causality and identity.
For this upcoming exhibition opportunity, I chose a self- imposed system and direction that would involve working with the fifth letter of our alphabet. My first inclination to do so was because it is the initial of my given name, secondly, the lower-case version of the letter ‘e’ has become ubiquitous as the prefix for anything and everything electronic, such as e-mail, e-trade, e-commerce, and Audi’s new electric car, the e-tron, etc. The letter E is also the most utilized of all the letters of the alphabet, which has proven to be quite valuable to code breakers. Then there is the plethora of wonderful words that start with E: Earth, ecstasy, elephant, elated, exuberant, elemental, exceptional, energetic, elusive, eucalyptus, excruciating and EASE.
By super-imposing a sans serif form of the letter E on a map of Fresno, CA, specific locations at the twelve corners or nodes of the letter were identified. The next step in the process involved exploring these twelve appointed locations, seeking the most interesting and inspiring visuals that would become photographs for the exhibit.
The chosen images from the exploration of the specified sites resulted in numerous images or “snapshots” that have been printed and will be presented as part of the installation. A large version of the letter E has been cut from a sheet of plywood, (approximately four feet by eight feet), upon which there is an enlarged map of Fresno. This table like structure will be situated in the gallery horizontally at approximately mid-thigh height. Each of the twelve locations are identified by street signs from the intersection they represent, and their GPS co-ordinates.
Friends and students of mine have been offered the opportunity to have their work in the gallery as an exercise in inclusivity and ‘relational aesthetics’. I invited them to create their piece of art based on their own personal expressions of and about the letter ‘E’.
I thoroughly enjoy utilizing the technical skills I have acquired over the years to communicate my observations and feelings about the world we share with all living things. The second and perhaps most important aspect of this endeavor is that by creating this installation, I am able to provide the viewers, in this time of great chaos, a sense of comforting EASE.
Spectrum Art Gallery is excited to announce a “Pop-up” exhibition of Small Works, a show that features artworks from members that measure no longer than 12 inches in any dimension. This is a popular exhibition format that our members will enjoy, and will bring options to the public of smaller, more affordable artworks. The other benefit of this exhibition is that due to the smaller submissions, it provides a venue for members to showcase a greater variety of work. Participants are encouraged to submit up to four works to the show. |
Mr. Rhames is a digital photographer who prints his own images using archival pigment inks on Fine Art archival paper. His photography includes portraiture, ‘scapes, nature, commercial and product imagery and weddings. The prints he displays in this exhibit are both monochrome and color.
The subject matter is from a larger body of work and is a collection of images capturing the distinctive beauty of medieval Irish – Norman architecture of some of Ireland’s lesser known historical sites.
In Rhames’ description of his exhibit, he states “While most people see these old Medieval ruins as just piles of rocks, I am irresistibly drawn to the eloquent poem of history that they whisper to me. Most often, I am completely alone with these stone edifices and, while photographing them from every conceivably interesting angle, able to hear their whisperings and envision the stories they conjure in my more than willing imagination.”
He adds, “The finished product of my photography seems to inevitably result in what those sites felt like to me more than what they looked like in the light of forensic accuracy. Many times, the finished product of my photography of these tangible historical markers seems to be “dark” in an emotional sense. I often wonder if that result is an expression of my knowledge that history has not been kind to my Irish ancestors. Particularly that history imposed upon them by my father’s Anglo-Irish ancestors.”
Mr. Rhames will present a discussion of his photography and techniques on Friday January 17th, at 7 PM at The Spectrum Gallery’s “Friday Photography Live”.
Mr. Rhames was first introduced to serious photography as a “rookie” police officer with the City of Fresno Police Department, assigned to the Identification Bureau (what is now called CSI), photographing crime scenes and other events requiring photographic evidence. The assignment was brief, but he learned “the basics”. Upon retirement, 40 years later, he gravitated to photography as a second career. He studied and completed the Commercial Photography Course with the New York Institute of Photography, continued his photographic education through intensive selfteaching methods and has been a licensed photographer since 2010. In successive years Fresno Fair Professional Photography Exhibition, he has been awarded numerous awards in the Professional Category.
