Currently on Display is our on-going seven-part feature investigating the individual works that are included in the show currently on display at photo-eye Gallery. These artist features include the images selected for this exhibition as well as the artists' thoughts and inspirations behind the individual image or images.
The featured images this week are:
Edward Ranney’s Star Axis, NM, 2-25-89, 1989 and
The Bridge at Hoover Dam, Nevada Pier Construction, November 24, 2009 by
Jamey Stillings
Edward Ranney
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| Star Axis, NM, 2-25-89, 1989 by Edward Ranney |
"Over the years as I have photographed the growth of the earth sculpture
Star Axis, I have periodically made pictures from this vantage point, looking north up the slot of what its creator,
Charles Ross, has called the Star Tunnel. Now, some 22 years later, the lower Tunnel is completed, and Ross has nearly completed the Solar Pyramid, which encloses the upper tunnel and stairway oriented to the North Star. As with a number of the approximately 1,500 large format pictures I have made at Star Axis since 1979, this photograph addresses the complexities of scale that are now an integral part of the site. Monumental, yet still often intimate in feeling, the sense of space which one experiences here seems to constantly change, depending on where one stands, and how the weather, and in particular, the sun, delineate form and space. Both expansive and contained, with ancient as well as contemporary overtones, Star Axis has gradually grown out of its own ruin, remaining an enigma waiting to reveal itself as a sculpture to observe the stars. I have in the past described the process of photographing construction and change at the site as a kind of archaeology in reverse, an excavation of the present intended to give insights to the future as well as to the past. The cultural historian JB Jackson once commented that certain qualities of the New Mexico landscape suggest that it gives us another way of measuring time - that '...even the newest of man-made structures are contemporary with the primeval.' The process of chronicling the changing light and space at Star Axis gives this insight ongoing relevance." –Edward Ranney
See more images from Edward Ranney
here.
Jamey Stillings
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The Bridge at Hoover Dam, Nevada Pier Construction, November 24, 2009 by Jamey Stillings
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"During November 2009, I called the Federal Highway Administration, watched construction web cams and called my friend at the dam. I wanted to photograph installation of the bridge's final column segments. With six segments remaining on the final two columns, I arrived. Beginning early in the morning and throughout the day, I photographed from various angles as new segments were added. I positioned myself near the Colorado River on the Arizona side of the dam's powerhouse to follow the final moves. Mid-afternoon the action stopped and I made a phone call. 'Are you going to fly the final segment today?' I asked. 'We are waiting on a few parts!' was the reply. So I followed the evening light down from a wonderful and dramatic angle, the Las Vegas metro area lighting the sky and the bridge's construction lighting providing the rest." –Jamey Stillings
See more images from Jamey Stillings
here.
Part seven concludes this Currently on Display blog series. Thank you for following the series and I hope that it helped you obtain a more personal understanding of the images. Though this exhibition is coming to an end, you can always view the work on our website or, if you are in Santa Fe, stop by the galley and I will be more then happy to pull the prints from our flat files.
I am excited to announce that Friday April 8th we are opening a solo exhibition of Jamey Stillings' photographs of The Bridge at Hoover Dam with an artist reception from 4-7pm. The exhibition runs through May 20th. We had a smaller exhibition of Stillings' work in October of 2009, when Jamey had just started his project. This upcoming exhibition covers the last 30 months of the construction up to completion. The work that we will be showing is a selection from a larger exhibit that is scheduled to travel for the next two years. The next stop is the Phoenix Art Museum.
Please contact me if you would like additional information or would like to receive email updates about Edward Ranney, Jamey Stillings or any of the
artists that we represent.
Anne Kelly, Associate Director photo-eye Gallery
Read the first six posts:
PART ONE - Jo Whaley and David Trautrimas
PART TWO - Tom Chambers and Laurie Tümer
PART THREE - Hiroshi Watanabe, Michael Levin and Julie Blackmon
PART FOUR –Zöe Zimmerman, James Pitts and Kevin O’Connell
PART FIVE- Nick Brandt and Raymond Meeks
PART SIX- Jock Sturges, Mark Klett and Don Hong-Oai
