Photo Objects & Small Prints: Julia Barello & Chris McCaw

photo-eye Gallery Photo Objects & Small Prints: Julia Barello & Chris McCaw Comments on the work of Julia Barello & Chris McCaw currently in photo-eye Gallery's Photo Objects & Small Prints exhibition.

In addition to the many unique photographic pieces in our current exhibition, Photo Objects & Small Prints, we also teamed up with Mary Anne Redding to present REDD: a pop-up jewelry installation featuring the work of Julia Barello and Rachelle Thiewes. We asked Thiewes to speak about her work last week, which you can read here. This week, I've asked Mary Anne Redding to contribute her thoughts on Barello's work. I've also asked Chris McCaw to discuss his Sunburn series. Read the previous posts on our Photo Objects & Small Prints show here.

Mary Anne Redding on Julia Barello's work

Julia Barello, Necklace made from dyed MRI & X-ray film
$900

"I have known Julia Barello for over ten years. We first met in 2003 when I was the Director of the New Mexico State University Art Gallery in Las Cruces, where I had the opportunity to work with Julia closely over the course of three annual faculty shows. Julia’s artwork is exquisitely crafted, beautiful in conception and execution. I believe she is working with materials and ideas that reach beyond our typical notion of jewelry or body art. Working with X-ray and MRI film, she first used images of the interior of the body to adorn the exterior of the body. She has now moved beyond individual bodies, taking her material from the intimate to the universal and onto walls, ceilings and floors. I support her desire to make the next transition from objects in a space to objects that create a space where the viewer participates in a more visceral experience of her work." –Mary Anne Redding

Watch the short video on Instagram of Julia Barello's Bluster wall installation

Chris McCaw

Chris McCaw, Sunburned GSP #691 (Anza Borrego), 2013
Unique gelatin silver photograph, $4100

"This project I have explored over the past few years continues to amaze me and strengthen my faith in analogue photographic processes. For me, the immediacy of the recorded scorched path of the sun onto the in-camera paper negative redefines the term 'contact print.' I am a dinosaur who still believes there's nothing like a physical photograph made through the reactions of light and chemistry.

While all my work is made on a variety of expired papers, I am continually searching for and occasionally finding 'new' papers that solarize (tonal reversal through extreme over exposure to light). What I love is that no paper does this tonal reversal in the same way, they each have their own unique tonal palette which I attempt to learn to control through trial and lots of errors in the field and the darkroom. An example would be in Sunburned GSP #691, a summer sunrise taken in the hills of Anza Borrego, above the Salton Sea. This piece was made from a box of paper that has one of the most unusual reactions to solarization. Notice the dark horizon line behind the mountain peak, that is the reflecting water of the Salton Sea which should be the brightest part of the image. The reflection was so bright and the exposure so long that the reflection went from reversing into a positive, to cycling back into negative. This rarely happens with any other papers. What I love is that the piece is on that tonal threshold between positive and negative. There's an interesting color cast to the paper that is also the result of the solarization. Too bad I only have one partial box of the paper and it's only an 8x10 box..." –Chris McCaw