2024 Field Gallery Show
About Trees
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” William Blake; Poet, Painter, Printmaker. 1799.
My work for 2024 is an expression of affection for trees that has its roots in life-long experiences in the natural world both on and off Island. Of course they are everywhere on the Island, and we can celebrate the work of numerous conservation organizations that have succeeded in protecting significant tracts of land that are home to the wide variety of trees and the ecosystems of which they are a vital part. Islanders and visitors can immerse themselves and find wonder, solace and connection in these protected places, but the joy of trees can be had anywhere we take time to be among them.
I’ve made a dozen gilded vellum prints of trees in various island settings. I chose this unique process because it permits me to best express William Blake’s description of what trees are for me. In their great variety and in the multitude of ways trees are simply themselves in the natural world, alone or in community, they challenge my imagination’s ability to creatively depict them. This work is not a taxonomy of Island trees. More an extended visual poem, a product of affection, memory and longing.
I will continue to photograph trees across the Island, constrained only buy a failure of imagination. I’m not sure where this will take me, but the uncertainty is its own motivation and reward.
In a Different Light
Because I’m restless by nature and believe Maya Angelou who said, “You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”, I’ve undertaken a photographic project using a converted digital camera that captures Infrared (IR) light – light not on the human visual spectrum. Because the process involves light we normally can’t perceive and lends itself to striking Black & White and unusual color effect photography, the project offers many exciting possibilities for photographing different subjects. These first two are in Black & White of Nobska Lighthouse in Woods Hole and the Island Home ferry crossing Vineyard Sound. In both, clouds dominate the scene. The IR capacity of the camera’s sensor amplifies their character and beauty by capturing light not “visible” to our eyes or the typical sensor on digital cameras.
2024 Field Gallery Show Photographs
2023 Field Gallery Show
“You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” Maya Angelou
This year’s pigment prints on paper are all black and white. I print them on thin, translucent, Japanese Kozo paper which imparts a subtle tone to the photographs of island locales.
Additionally, I’ve made two large color images, printed by a dye sublimation process on aluminum. Both are abstract expressions of the island’s unique natural environment.
I’ve have taken a hiatus from making gilded vellum prints to continue my study of the 19th Century Cyanotype process. After nearly two decades of making inkjet prints, lightning struck a couple of years ago when rereading Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “The Blue of Distance,” which initiated a deep dive into cyanotypes, and an obsessive “Exploration in Blue.” The history of the cyanotype process as both a means of documenting the physical world and a means of metaphoric expression appeals to me. And, while I still make the cyanotype Water Marks prints I introduced last year, my focus this year has shifted to making contact prints in the darkroom.
These cyanotype contact prints are a product of my fall down the Prussian blue rabbit hole and the direct result of a quote I read as I researched the process. “No one but a vandal would print a landscape…in cyanotype.” Lyle Rexer cites this assertion by 19th century photographer P.H. Emerson in his book, “Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-Garde, the New Wave in Old Processes.” Well, why not be a vandal!
Working from digital negatives, I infuse my prints with a sense of the everydayness of perception as filtered through a personal interpretive process. Some of the prints are made from new photographs, some from my archive. All are made using the traditional cyanotype formula that is hand applied on Hahnemuehle Platinum Rag paper. A negative is placed over the sensitized paper, exposed in a UV exposure unit, and then developed, fixed, and dried.
2023 Field Gallery Photographs
2022 Field Gallery Show
This year's show photographs continue my exploration of my home, Martha's Vineyard. Year-round visual inspiration is found everywhere. And, the more and longer I look, the more I see, especially in locations I'm quite familiar with.
This year's archival pigment prints are supplemented by prints made using the 19th Century Cyanotype process, a wet darkroom process that lends itself to exciting experimentation, beyond sun prints and contact prints made from negatives. Included in the show are four 20x20" prints made without a camera or lens. They are abstract impressions made using only paper sensitized with cyanotype chemistry, essentially iron salts, and the sea and pond water found on the island. These are initial works in a longer term "Water Marks" series I will make in this way. Additional work will be added periodically.
2022 Show Photographs
2021 Field Gallery Show
Produced during our shared Covid-19 constrained life, these new photographs reflect in part my personal Covid-19 consciousness. The Black and White, A Mind of Winter photographs were produced with Wallace Stevens's poem, The Snow Man, vividly in mind. The color, Seasons photographs also reflect a sense of shaken certainty about things as they appear. My gilded vellum prints continue a project undertaken a few years ago in pre-Covid-19 times.
State Of Flux - Covid-19 Consciousness
Wherever I was during the pandemic I could feel people's uncertainty and apprehension about what was happening and what might yet happen. The anxiety was palpable and it was almost as if I could perceive in the atmosphere. Looking at New York City's familiar skyline in the spring, it was as if these collective feelings of uncertainty were emanating from the city itself. It was like the certainties about life we had faith in, our architecture of beliefs, could come undone. Later in the year, though better informed about what the pandemic actually was, this atmospheric condition persisted. The familiar landscapes and activities of summer and fall in Massachusetts were also filtered through it. I expect this condition will continue for a while. These photographers are visual interpretations of my experience.
A Sacred Place. An Exhibition at the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard opening October 5, 2019
A SACRED PLACE
This group of photographs from a larger collection highlights an assemblage of small Romanesque churches gathered under the name, Basilica of Santo Stefano, in the northern Italian city of Bologna. Every spring for the past decade, my wife and I have travelled there for a few days, she for business, me to photograph and immerse myself in a city of friendly people, gritty cosmopolitan energy, remarkable art and architecture, and exceptional food and wine.
While I am no longer a practitioner of the faith of my childhood, the long, intense exposure to it has left a lasting familiarity with its history and symbols. These few photographs attempt to convey a small part of my time spent in this physical manifestation of them.
The church complex dates to the 5th Century and was founded at the location of a temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose worship was brought to the north of the Italy by the Romans. Since its founding, but especially during the Crusades, the site has been a destination for pilgrims. It was once known as “Jerusalem in Bologna” because many religious symbols built into the architecture of the site, as well as the religious artworks collected there, represented sacred places in the Holy Land. In the 12th Century, the various small churches, some built with Roman and Greek era columns were incorporated into a single complex in the Romanesque style of the period. Renaissance and Baroque styles influenced later additions and renovations.
Sitting low at the narrow side of the uneven triangular piazza that bears its name, modest Santo Stefano is open to the sky in the neighborhood in which it is located. This place of worship has been at this location for over 1500 years and for centuries before was a place of worship for practitioners of pre-Christian faiths. When I first encountered it, I felt the pulse of its history and culture. I was enthralled. My first impressions of the setting are captured in two photographs; “Mysteries of Faith” and “Spirito Santo” from 2009. They took over a year to find their ultimate photographic expression as I repeatedly recalled and relived their initial impact. Other expressions of my experiences there took shape more quickly though each photograph is infused with my fascination with the place. Selective and soft focus, overlayered textures and variable camera angles are some of the ways I have photographically interpreted my experiences there.
Over centuries, the people of Bologna and pilgrim visitors have engaged in acts of preservation and reconstruction of the symbols that comprise the story of their faith. Santo Stefano has been made and remade by the devoted and skilled hands of these people.
Michael R. Stimola, October 5, 2019
