Page 20 - the NOISE October 2014

QUINTESSENTIAL DARK SKIES
ABOVe: A detail of Ms. Marten’s Humphreys Peak & Beyond, BY ClAiR featured at night Visions V at Coconino Center AnnA
Rose
As ARtists tRUMPet the eveninG hoUR for the Arts through October 29.
On September 20, 2014, I have the opportunity to attend the opening reception of “Night Visions V” at Coconino Center for the Arts, and a few days before, preview the show and speak with some of the artists involved.
“Night Visions is the brain child of the Dark Skies Coalition — they wanted to celebrate the night sky with the beauty of art to create an intersection of science and art in a gallery setting,” elizabeth Hellstern of Flagstaff Arts Council tells me. “We have a lot of photographs, mixed media, sculpture, glass and paintings. It’s a great quintessential Flagstaff art show. We have over 60 pieces juried by Karen Hanmer. We also invited local glass artist George Averbeck who has three vases in the show and Dan Duriscoe who has a photograph in the show.”
My first look at Night Visions is two days before opening reception; while center staff busy themselves with hanging, tags have yet to be mounted and through the anonymous lot I come to one in particular, and stew over knowing its creator.
A scene of the vast night sky over the San Francisco Peaks, composed entirely on fabric, the artist had used her needles to stitch fabric mimicking the galaxy’s motions; dark hues of purple swirl with vibrant yellows & oranges over an outline of the mountain, illuminated as if by moonlight from a park not too far away.
At opening, I meet Arline Martens, who now stands in front of her fully titled & duly labeled Humphrey’s Peak and Beyond, a work she tells me “is basically a whole cloth piece; the peaks one large appliqué ... A lot of this was serendipi- tous, a lot of the darks were just where they were supposed to be. I went back and added darks to it so it would have a little more substance and form to it, so you see really intense stitching in here. I used colored pencils afterwards, and did some highlights. I used a sketch I had of the Peaks, laid it over the top of the fabric, used that as a pattern and stitched right over the top of the paper.”
Starting with plain white cotton backing, Ms. Martens used a layer of cheesecloth to create the textured effect of the Milky Way. After misting the fabric with water, she began using fabric paints as one would watercolors, applying paint with big brushes and adding colors to create a sense of depth. When the paint dried, Ms. Martens then began sewing on top of the piece using a sewing machine.
“I was very cautious as I was working under the sewing machine, so that I didn’t remove the gauze, because it’s not glued down. The paint causes it to adhere a little bit, so I had to work carefully. I use the sewing machine almost like a pen and start defining and outlining areas. Lastly I flicked some sparkly paint on the piece.”
As we chat, Ms. Martens tells me it has been a long time since she has seen this scene she has made. She tells me the
work still has the same feeling she had for it as she was creat- ing it. “Sometimes a piece still carries that energy after it goes through all the tweaking and decision making processes and it still has its first little spirit, its first little inkling, and it carries that off, and it catches with somebody else. I think that’s won- derful, I think that’s all what we have to share with each other.”
Then, two pieces, placed far apart in the gallery, eerily at- tracted me. Both turned out to be photographs by the famil- iar Joe Cornett, who readers may remember won a Viola not too long ago. The first, Pacifica Pier is the ocean at night, the water smooth and glassy.
“In the surf community of Pacifica, south of San Francisco,” Mr. Cornett tells me, “I was experimenting with a new model of digital camera at the time. This was a slow shutter speed so the movement of the Ocean was blurred, creating that soft quality it has. Pacifica is often foggy so that is what drew me tothearea. IthinkwithalotofthenightworkIdo,Itooam drawn to the eerie look they have.”
Moving toward the second, Crisp makes a glaring contrast: a parking lot under a starless sky.
“Crisp was taken on a rare foggy night on the east side of Flagstaff,” Mr. Cornett says. “I was attracted to the light in the sky and the mood that it had. Fog has enough moisture in it that it reflects light and produces a color in the sky that is aesthetically pleasing.”
While a good number of the artists represented in “Night Visions V” are from Flagstaff, entries arrived from all over and this year’s selection comes from local as well as
international artists.
Jim nickelson is a full-time photographer and custom
digital painter who makes his life in Maine with his wife and daughter. “My goal for my Nightfall body of work is to approach classic landscape locations, such as Otter Cliffs in Maine’s Acadia National Park, and interpret them in a new way,” Mr. Nickelson says. “My night photography definitely has its origin in my love of space, which led to my initial career choice at NASA.”
Utah Painter Marc Toso, who drove down from Salt Lake City to be at the opening reception says of his work: “Eter- nal Procession is part of an ongoing project I am working on. This is photographing rock art and ruins under the night sky. I believe these two things together is the truest sense of wil- derness, wilderness being an unfamiliar place where the rules of the normal world no longer apply. These two aspects to- gether highlight the incredible diversity of human culture in the context of the infinite (almost) space in which we exist.”
“The biggest aspect of the creative process for me is pa- tience,” says Mr. Toso. “For The Eternal Procession this in-
volved a long hike to the top of a ridge and actually find- ing the petroglyph. This took several hours. Then I messed around with composition in the daylight. Did some test shots and found something I thought might work. This is followed by more patience where I lounged around waiting for the sun to fall and after total darkness took a series of photographs of the Milky Way. Since it was pitch black but I wanted some nat- ural light on the petroglyphs I waited around for a few more hours until moon light hit the art. All of this was then fol- lowed by a hike back to my van in the middle of the night and lots of waiting around and patience which would ultimately be just one photograph. The style in which I do things results in pretty much one image a night.”
I discover in the Jewel Gallery at Coconino Center for the Arts is a new show by Sky Black, “My Beautiful Friends.” It’s almost impossible to fit into the Jewel Gallery with so many people trying to squeeze in to view Sky Black’s new show. I nearly have to resort to kicking a few people in the shins to get close enough to say hello.
“For this body of work, I have aimed to simplify my compo- sitions while filling them with exquisite details and thought provoking subjects,” Mr. Black tells me. “In the last year, the style has taken on sort of a metaphysical approach; mixing animals, figures, objects and nature together to create a sub- jective viewing platform for the audience. My ideas, at times, will come to me at the most unexpected moments when a sudden undeniable image pops into my head. Other times it takes months of experimentation on canvas until the right idea reveals itself to me. The key is to remain open to the pos- sibilities that are waiting.”
“This is my last show in Flagstaff for the time being,” Mr. Black tells me. “I am more committed now to creating the highest quality work which consequently makes it take much longer to produce the paintings. I also feel very strongly that my work needs to be seen by a new audience. Flagstaff has been great to me, but there comes a time when we all have to move on. This is my home though, I’ll always be back.”
night Visions V and My Beautiful friends are on display at Coconino Center for the Arts through October 29. On Satur- day, October 4, jazz soprano saxophonist & composer Jane ira Bloom & her night Skywriting Trio will perform at 7:30PM; a conversation with Ms. Bloom about her work as NASA’s first jazz artist-in-residence will take place at 6:15PM. Then on Saturday, October 18, composer Karim elmahmoudi visits Flagstaff for a performance of his original composition Orbit: A Symphonic Fantasy. 928/779-2300 FlagArtsCouncil.org
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