People and Places:
Selections from the Allen Thomas, Jr. Photography Collection

Potter Gallery / March 14 - June 30, 2008

People and Places: Selections from the Allen Thomas, Jr. Photography Collection provides an intriguing and personalized overview of the portraiture and landscape genres as seen through the eyes of this Wilson, North Carolina collector. Covering a range of subjects, including domestic life, identity, narrative and tromp l'oeil scenery (trick-of-the-eye), among others, this collection privileges an insightful study of contemporary themes.

Photography is a versatile medium and highly prized for its expressive potential. Conventional film cameras offer immense creative latitude. Additionally, digital cameras have fueled grassroots utilization and revolutionized our lives. In the purest sense, the camera has become a tool for self expression.

Photographs contain many layers of information. Often, the portrayal of a person or a particular scene is exactly what it appears to be, a truthful rendering of subject. In this vein, Alex Soth frequently combines people, places and things in his photographs. In addition to the rich and unique environments in which his subjects are pictured, the meaning is all the more intriguing if we consider the circumstances of how the picture came into being. The artist doesn't construct the sitters' environments. Rather, he searches them out and thus the places in which the sitters are pictured provide subtle clues that aid the viewer's search for meaning. In the 1970s, Tseng Kwong Chi used pictures to examine identity, nature, and culture, donning official-looking Mao Tse-Tung garb, adopting the appearance of a Chinese Communist dignitary and constructing a photographic diary of his world travels. Self-portraits all, he is regularly pictured in front of public monuments, natural treasures or popular settings.

But photographs can also be a vehicle for stories conjured using alternative strategies and techniques. Pictures can present subjects that, while appearing to be truthful, can instead be complete fictions. Digital editing tools can alter and improve the original or subsume pieces of one into another, thereby eliminating altogether the picture's original meaning. Anthony Goicolea, for example, stands out in this regard, constructing elaborate fictions using digital photographic fragments from many image sources. Working with volunteers, Georges Rousse relies on single-point-perspective as he instructs individuals to paint precisely defined areas of architectural space with color. When complete, the artist uses the camera to capture the result. Astounding to the eye, Rousse creates pictorial conceits that defy the truth-telling capabilities of the camera lens.

People and Places illuminates several aspects of the rich, provocative terrain that defines the photography of our time. The photograph, digital or film, proffers a portal into our global condition, one intimate and personal on the one hand and one in which artists can convey the vastness and complexity of the intellectual, physical, and spiritual world in which we live.

Line Dance: Jan Campos/Mark Hewitt

Overlook Gallery / February 29 - June 30, 2008

Traditional crafts are produced by hand and prized for their usefulness and durability. Examples might include quilts for warmth, mugs and pitchers for holding and serving liquids or baskets for storage. Because practicality and serviceability is essential for such items, innovation isn't always a prized value. Not so in the hands of artists Jan Campos and Mark Hewitt.

In spite of and especially because the artists use different mediums, the pieces created by artists Jan Campos and Mark Hewitt might be considered unrelated and yet they are connected. Each artist's quest for originality and expression leads them to incorporate pattern or markings on or in the surface of their pieces. Campos' stitches range from very ordered and systematic to haptic. Hewitt's embellished or glaze-painted decoration is similarly well-conceived and playful, even painterly.

Self-taught quilter Jan Campos uses her general knowledge of piecing and stitching to create art forms that are simultaneously elegant and simple. Working on a large scale, Campos combines the sparseness of bold, dynamic form with obsessive stitching. Her confident and seemingly predetermined compositions are innovative and spontaneous in execution, for she doesn't follow patterns. Her meticulous sewing creates designs that functionally reinforce the quilt's structural integrity and aesthetically add visual energy to the fabric surface while enlivening each composition overall.

Mark Hewitt's distinctive, hand thrown vessels are a testament to the masterful handling of his medium. Hewitt's wood fired vessels are useful, but more important to the artist, each piece must be aesthetically magnificent. Hewitt's integrity and commitment to his craft is manifest in the simple, well-made shapes of his vessels. His decorative sensibility is complementary to Campos' evolving and meticulous approach to stitching. Hewitt, for example, incises or draws into the wet clay with a tool such as a pencil. The resulting lines are redolent of natural forms such as leaves, branches and even organic things seen only with a microscope. He also stamps repetitive shapes into the clay's surface. Physical intrusions into the vessel's skin are complemented by elegant and painterly glaze passages. Hewitt's approach integrates peerless technique demonstrated at scales both large and small with refined decorative surface treatments. The results are pleasurable and aesthetically engaging.

t i m e

Overlook Gallery / February 29 - June 30, 2008

SECCA presents three large-scale time-lapse video installations from University of North Carolina at Greensboro artists Amy Purcell, Chris Cassidy, and Max Negin.

Diurnal Rhythm: Head in the Clouds

Diurnal Rhythm: Head in the Clouds, presents a single day constructed out of many days and compressed into an ongoing 15 minute loop. The structure of the temporal compression follows the balance of light duration of an early summer day and is marked by the rhythmic cycles of the moon and the sun. The circular screen presents a physical slice of time and reinforces the cyclic diurnal structure and the endless loop format. The installation of the circular screen invites the viewer to kinesthetically experience having one's head in the clouds.

The meaning of the expression of someone having their head in the clouds is both optimistic and critical. The individual is distracted by a daydream or worldview that is unrealistic and without grounding. However, their view takes them away from the earthly and absorbs them in a rarefied and remote atmosphere. A person with their head in the clouds has given themselves over to a dream, idea, or experience that is all air, atmosphere, and light. It is a state of being that is disembodied and elevated while disconnected from the topical and practical.

While making the work, my intent was to have the camera mirror my frame of mind during the day with the sky and clouds as the subject. The mid-day acrobatic swings parallel the swings and shifts of focus and energy that often define that time of day, while the focused pans of the morning contrast the stillness of the evening. My desire was to have the camera mimic my interior and subjective state of that time of day. The capturing of sky and clouds was extended over many days and then edited to become one day and night or diurnal rhythm. Diurnal Rhythm: Head in the Clouds was a concept, process, and now is a physical experience that offers escape and immersion into a daydream of sky.

Amy Purcell 2007/08


Augury/The Atlantic Flyway

"At earlier times, in the summer evenings during my childhood when I had watched from the valley as the swallows circled in the last light, still in great numbers in those days, I would imagine that the world was held together by the courses they flew through the air."
...W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

For the last several years, my work has centered around methods of sampling, documentation and mapping, as a way of understanding my own relation to the specific geographies in which I find myself. Many of these projects have dealt with the kinds of patterns, lines and boundaries we perceive in or impose on the surrounding environment.

The ongoing series of videos entitled Augury was inspired by the ancient Roman practice of that name. Augury was an important ritual in Rome and elsewhere, and speaks to the human quest for order in even the most random sequence of events. I was intrigued by the practitioners' imposition of meaning on otherwise insignificant details, such as the direction in which birds fly overhead. Especially, I recognized some consonance between the augur's marking out of a templum, a sacred space in the sky, and my own focus on place.

The project eventually came to rely on a video camera to function as objective observer. Long-duration footage of a fixed portion of sky directly overhead captures fleeting glimpses of birds in flight. To distill the hidden patterns that develop over time, I collapse the individual frames of the footage, allowing each frame to remain, superimposed on succeeding ones. The resulting video reveals dashed and dotted lines composed of bird silhouettes, spiraling across the frame in surprising arabesques.

The exhibited works focus on the Carolinas section of the Atlantic Flyway, the seasonal migration route that attracts both millions of birds and thousands of birders. The first segment features countless songbirds during their spring stopover at Pinckney Island, South Carolina. The second segment focuses on a group of osprey fishing at Huntingdon Beach State Park, also in South Carolina. The final section captures the freewheeling flight of turkey vultures at Pilot Mountain, North Carolina.

Chris Cassidy 2003


Observe

Observe is an inspection of growth and change over time. A sixth month evolution of how a face changes, growth of blades of grass, and the movement of a sun rise or sun set provide different chances to see transformations of landscapes, from the expanse of nature to the microscopic pores on our skin.

Modern living does not provide frequent opportunity for thoughtful observation. The chance to contemplate nature, time and how it relates to our personal biological growth is a luxury. Looking into a mirror every morning, walking by a patch of grass, or sleeping through the rise of the sun, we might miss subtle changes in each environment. Time is the measure of how long these changes take place, and observation is the critical tool to know what is different.

By manipulating time, we can gain perspective on how things evolve. Time is a human measure and a tool to help us understand the relationship of moments, from the nanosecond to generations. Observe is an exploration of physical, personal, and emotional growth.

Max Negin 2008

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