Afterword: Hacking Large Format

As an afterword on Guest Blogger George Goodroe's series on Large Format, I'd like to address rock-bottom, inexpensive ways to get a taste of large format. All of which involve compromises, some quite significant, but allow different entry points.

The camera: By giving up the sharpness and literal realism, movements, rise and fall (perspective controls) and more, the price of a LF camera can come down to $56.00 used. Yes, fifty-six dollars. You can buy a pinhole 4x5 camera (which have their own charms) for that used here: [Link]. Maybe splurge, and get a shiny new one for $58.00  [Link], [Link], or bling out & opt for teak for $159 [Link].

All use standard 4x5 film holders available here [Link]. Each holder holds two sheets of film. You use one, flip it over (after replacing the slide) and use the 2nd. Learn more about these cameras [Link], History and lots of info [Link].

Or go to 8x10 for less than $250 new [Link]. With 8x10 you can make contact prints from your negatives. It worked well for Edward Weston, so it could work for you. They even come in wide-angle versions. The film and holders become much more expensive with 8x10.

Pinhole cameras make magnifying loupes, ground glass and dark cloths unnecessary. The pinhole doesn't let enough light in to make a ground glass useful. They also have no finders, so you have to develop a pinhole wizard's eye for imagining what the camera is seeing (though if you do this, let me know and I will tell you how to make a somewhat useful finder). and work intuitively. It ends up being an XXL point and shoot.

Film: You can get 4x5 B&W film locally at North Tampa Photography [Link], which they keep refrigerated, and you might be able to find some out of date film on occasion. Walk all the way around the counter, they're usually in small cardboard boxes. There's always B&H.

Light Meter: Do you have a point and shoot with different kinds of metering available? One that lets you select your f/stop? You can use this for a meter, though you will have to figure out how many less f/stops of light will be falling on your film thanks to the minimal pinhole f/stop. It's less complicated than it sounds.

You can get 4x5 developing trays, thongs, and darkroom chemicals at North Tampa Phtography as well and develop your film in a well-sealed bathroom with ventilation. If, like most of us, you have a flatbed scanner, you can scan your negatives, process them digitally and print them out on your own printer, or take the file to CVS and have them do it for cheap. Yes, you'll be giving up megapixels, and a lot of other LF advantages, but you'll get your foot in the LF door for a pittance of the going price of admission. And, you can send your negatives through a custom lab, get big scans and still make large custom prints.

Tripod: Scour the cameras for sale section of the St Pete Times read it early in the AM, and if you find something, call early. Good tripods come and go with regularity. Last week there were two Gitzos for 50-75 each (!). Otherwise, pop for a new Tilt-All tripod. Heavy, classic and amply sturdy. Heavy enough to build character. Gearheads will tell you there's better, and there is, but not for $110 new, and you can use it with all your other cameras. [Link]

Software: Can't afford Photoshop? Try GIMP. In spite of the glamorous name, it has a great rep and will do everything you need and more. [Link] or for global tweaks, Irfanview [Link]. Did I mention they're free? They will also work with all your digital camera pictures. Be sure to download all the plug-ins.


I am not in any way countering or undermining the suggestions in George Goodroe's LF series, or suggesting anyone do this, only supplying a alternate, far lower cost route to Large Format, which, as I remarked at the outset, has its limitations.

--- Luis

Gulport Art Walk

Gulfport Casino

Gulfport is an amazing beach town in that they've managed to avoid being engulfed by condos. It still has a charming, vanishing Florida authenticity to it. Once a month, they have their Gulfport Art Walk, which is more of a sidewalk craft show -- and an enchanting evening. [Link]

There are many beautiful and friendly restaurants and bars, along with boutiques and art studios.

On the sidewalk

The atmosphere is laid back. Lots of arts and crafts are on sale, people meander at a leisurely pace, and live music plays in the background from performers playing in front yards, insets and tents set up for the purpose.

The Chicago style hot dogs at the place pictured above are excellent and affordable. It pays to explore all the nooks and crannies in Gulfport.

There's a hot glass shop there, which gives workshops where you can learn to blow glass, or shop for gorgeous glass items and ornaments. Directly behind me when I took this picture, a band was playing some island tunes.

This musician was playing and singing right in front of the used bookstore (a must), next to two glowing pink flamingoes. I can recommend the Gulfport Art Walk as a guaranteed romantic evening for friends and lovers.

--- Luis

Wilson Loria's "The Habit" at Silver Meteor

At one level, Wilson Loria's solo play The Habit sounds simple enough: A woman who happens to be a nun and a nurse, defined, confined and crushed by her roles has a new charming patient enters her life and she runs off with him. In reality, from the first five minutes, The Habit is a torrent of emotions that sweeps you far away to an intimate and familiar place.

The monologues and dialogues are often in a rich, throbbing ecstatic style. The frenzied unfulfilled passions the nun experiences reach shrill, fevered, poetic pitches,  and at times slow down to metered thoughts. Her new patient, suffering from pneumonia, is a bad boy. Street-wise, worldly, silver-tongued, and charming. His accounts of his life and family are somewhat similar in form and pace to the nun's. Both are laced with references to Lot's wife, astrology, and much, much more. The attentive theater goer soon realizes that there are points of correspondence in their lives, and later, that some of these stories prefigure later events in the play. These connections exponentially multiply possibilities between and within the characters. Their complexity is enough to put the audience in a similar state of mind to that of the characters.  At one point you realize you're not sure there were two real characters to begin with. One may have dreamt the other into being, or perhaps Loria and the viewer's mind breathed life into both of them.

The Habit is strong throughout. There's a recorded soundtrack that plays at times, sometimes as the voices in the characters' heads, others as a kind of chorus. The characters embody the psychic energies of the sacred and the profane and how they interact. There are many incredibly beautiful, poetic lines in this play, images that will stay with you. Many great dances, one by the nun whose intensity is awesome to behold. Songs and accordion playing. I found myself recalling lines, and considering possibilities right before going to sleep. 



Congratulations to Wilson Loria for a well-honed and intensely human experience, and to Michael and Silver Meteor for hosting the play.

October 21, 22 @ 8 PM and October 23 @ 4 PM (In ENGLISH)
Silver Meteor - 2213 E. 6th Avenue – YBOR CITY – Tampa (Right in back of the famous Columbia Restaurant)
For info. and tickets, call (727) 656-8053

Shadows and Reflections @ Morean Art Center

Suzanne Williamson, "Emerson Point Preserve"

My favorite account of the spiritual ideas of the Floridian mound-builders may not be true. Nor can it be true for the many cultures that came and went during the thousands of years in question. It has to do with a tripartite division of the human soul. They supposedly believed that the soul resided in our shadows, reflections in water, and in the pupils of our eyes. When we die, the parts of the soul residing in the shadows and reflections left the body and entered fish or animals. That in the pupil remained with the body, and it was this part that they prayed to and consulted with in the funerary mounds and funerary bundles in stilt structures built in the middle of man-made ponds. Shadows, reflections and the eye.  Suzanne Williamson's  and John Capouya's current show at the Morean Arts Center (MAC) is titled Shadows and Reflections.

S. Williamson, "Anderson/Narvaez Mound"

The mounds are difficult subjects for many reasons. Conceptually, they involve a wide span of time, starting about 5,000 years ago. Some were built over long periods of time, some in a period of months. They range from two feet high to around fifty. A variety of peoples inhabited the same areas over time. Some are funerary, housing human remains, from one or two to over 100 individuals. Others were temple mounds, often with structures atop them. Many are trash middens. Shapes vary, including rounded, conical, pyramidal and flat-topped. Often, they are a part of a complex of other mounds, ponds, causeways linking them, etc., although time, weather, massive looting (going on to this day), the fact that the materials turned out to be good for building roads and overgrowth decimated many and have made those that remain often extremely hard to discern. The mounds can be very difficult subjects for a photographer. Many can be formally underwhelming. In the picture above left, "Anderson/Narvaez Mound", the mound is literally depicted in a quasi-documentary style, subframed by trees and other plants. The juxtaposition of nature reclaiming the space with relatively ephemeral life forms, with the longer-lived, but weathered mound, the tones in a relational rather than hierarchical arrangement, make this visually oscillate between our efforts to see "mound" and the other formal elements. This one reminds me a little of the strategies of certain Lee Friedlander landscapes.

 There are a few known extensive engineering projects. At the entrance to Charlotte Harbor there is a man-made island, built by the Calusa at a vital strategic point. They built a large canal to run through the island, enabling them to row into safety, and for trading to occur adjacent to markets. Another site has central mounds, surrounded by six concentric man made ridges apparently used for massive trading, where canoes were routed to specific markets, and the central governmental unit probably collected taxes and kept an eye on things. There is only one other earthwork like it in the US, in Louisiana. Trade was extensive in our area, with artifacts found from Mexico to further North than the great mound builders of Cahokia, in Illinois. On the edge of Lake Okeechobee, which used to flood over its banks for half the year, there's another Venice-like structure discovered in 2002. A complex of domiciliary mounds that are linked by causeways. Not big enough for an entire village, but maybe for its elites. Everything there is over nine feet high.

Most mounds are on the Eastern Seaboard and the Midwest, but they can be found as far away as Arizona. At one time there were over twenty mounds in the Tampa Bay area, but now only a third remain.

All landscape photographs go beyond scenic depiction, with secondary aspects that belie the visuals. The mounds and shelters are heavily encoded with religious, historical, cultural, political and other narratives. Each of these is invested in a series of complex discourses, many of the being relational to each other. It is alluded to in the artist's statement -- and in Capouya's text.

S. Williamson, "Along the Calusa Heritage Trail"

"Along the Calusa Heritage Trail, Pineland, Lee County, FL. 2011"  is a glowing, backlit, mysterious landscape. It's not a mound per se, but what the photographer encountered on a trail leading to or from a site, I imagine.
Note the careful layering of picture elements, like the palmetto fronds limned by the light, superimposed over the dark tree trunk near the middle, and that second large tree along the left edge of the frame, apparently reeling from that great blast of light. 

Things that would make most photographers cringe, like vignetting, veiled flare astigmatism and comatic streaking are put to use here by a photographer who is intimately familiar with her gear. The result is a romantic and mystical image with the feel of a great secret or revelation lying just beyond our understanding.

Suzanne Williamson's interest in these earthworks began before her and John Capouya's move to Florida. She had already photographically explored the Cahokia complex, which is the biggest known. See National Geographic's gallery here [Link], and a series on rock shelters. It was  a natural progression from those projects into the Floridian mounds. What we see in this show is a subset of a much larger project called Sacred Lands [Link].

Display of type of cameras used.

For the pictures in this show, she used medium-format film toy cameras, like the famous Dianas [Link] which went out of production and were resurrected by Lomo [Link] and a variety of vintage folding cameras [Link]. Egalitarian tools for a complex project. Black and white was chosen because, as the artist remarked on her website, it is more ambiguous in time.

 Phil Penne and Linda Brassell, seen here against the black screen, played music using instruments fashioned after native ones.




 Williamson casts herself on her website as a latter-day expeditionary photographer/artist, an analog of the photographers that were involved in the surveys of the American West. She dodges the trap of exoticism primarily by transcending the literality of her subjects, sometimes going into what Walker Evans called "the documentary style", but more with her titles than anything else. A lot of these images look like expressive landscape art. If it wasn't for the titles, we might not know that some are about the mounds. Williamson plays within this conceptual space.





 The signature looks of these cameras combined with the photographer's openly romantic, incisive, passionate vision, formal concerns, and obvious background in art places the focus on her spiritual, highly personal, mysterious experience reaching across cultures and time.  The sensuousness of the forms of the earth, trees etc. runs from the surreal to the hyperreal.




John Capouya's words about his own experiences with the mounds were projected onto the walls. Poetic, grounded, at times journalistic, they bring the viewer the illusion of being there, the conversations, sensory experiences and strangeness of confronting a complex and culturally and politically loaded subject. It provides a contextual and complementary literary narrative to Williamson's visual one.

Installation View

One of the things that made this a standout show was the installation of large translucent prints that take up the majority of one of the galleries, shown at left. They hung like curtains from the ceiling. One could see through them to other images. Layers of images, with viewers sandwiched in between, just like the alternating layers of materials used to build the mounds. Effectively, it came across as a metaphor that like the mounds, our culture and selves will become layers below the bulges in the sand, below water and the trees that will grow where we live today. Standing between the sheets of imagery and words projected onto the walls, between shadows and reflections, it is a comforting, peaceful thought.





The MAC has an interactive area where viewers can build their own mound.







Congratulations to the Suzanne Williamson, John Capouya and the Morean Arts Center for a memorable show.

The Morean Arts Center is at 719 Central Avenue. This show will run through November 27th. 

--- Luis

P.S. There are three mound sites fairly close to the Morean Arts Center. I suggest you go to at least one of these sites.


Maximo Park [Link]


Philippi Park [Link]

The Bayshore Home Midden. Drive to SW corner of Tyrone Blvd and Park Street between that and Central Avenue there was a string of mounds where now well-off St, Petersburgians live. The mounds are the reason the houses are elevated.

The Case for Film in the 1st Century, Part IV

In my third installment in this series, I discussed the work-flow involved with Large Format (LF) photography. In this last installment, I'll talk about the LF mindset, and how LF work is fundamentally different from modern digital photography.

The entire process of making LF images really makes you think about the entire image. Light, shadow, contrast, composition, depth of field choices, focal point, image flow, and whether to produce the image in color or black and white. Since you tend to carry a lot of equipment around, I find myself doing a lot of scouting before I actually show up with a camera. Sometimes an image needs a certain time of day to allow the light to move into the right direction. My preferred scouting camera is an iPhone, and I use an app called Viewfinder Pro for visualizing what lens would work out best. I can relate many times when I came up upon a scene in the afternoon, and realized the light would be perfect in the morning. 

LF photography tends to be very contemplative, and it's this slower pace that I really prefer. Like an artist takes time to prepare his canvas for paint, I scout areas for images. Because of this slower pace, and the time involved in getting the image right, most LF photographers can relate in-depth stories about each photo, and how they came about. A good friend of mine is Rob Moorman of Moorman Photographics. Rod has a beautiful color image in the LF Show at Davidson Fine Arts. The image is a river scene, with overhanging trees, and a canoe. The mist is in the air and it feels almost magical. The print is on the order of four feet wide, and is one of the fan favorites in the show. Rob told me he was on a retreat on the river with some friends, woke up early and decided to grab his camera and see what developed (pun intended). Jose Suro has a print in the same show that required nearly six minutes of exposure which completely blurred the water yet maintained amazing image clarity of the wood and metal in the foreground.

 I'll be the first to say that LF isn't for everyone. The process is much more time intensive than momdern digital, and takes time to perfect. But you gain the ability to print and display very large images. And even though printed large, normally don't show grain or the pixelation that comes from enlarging digital images to those sizes.

I have a "Meetup Group" that meets from time to time at my office in St Petersburg Florida. We call ourselves Suncoast Medium and Large Format Photography. My goal in creating the group was to try to keep film alive, and to help people learn more about photography. Please feel free to join the Meetup Group (always free), and keep an eye open for meetings.

George Goodroe,
http://www.georgegoodroe.com/

[This is the final installment of the LF series. A special note of thanks to George Goodroe for the illuminating guest blogs on Large Format photography]

Midtown Through Young Eyes @ 620

If you go to Studio @ 620 This Saturday, you can see what 44 students from Melrose Elementary and John Hopins Middle School did during twelve days this summer. They weren't on vacation, but in a photo-journalistic summer camp where they learn the ethics,  ins and outs and camera work at a "Journeys in Journalism" summer camp that preceded the 40 photographic field trips. They also do their own interviews and write stories on laptops. The result is a collaborative documentary project of 100 photographs taken in their neighborhood, the exhibit at 620 (Saturday is the last day), the 32-page publication "Through Midtown Magazine", and a collection of the pictures from the exhibit in a book. Individual prints can also be purchased. The result is amazing. Professional in appearance, unbridled in passion, and refreshingly unconventional, I advise all local PJs to go to this exhibit, to do, as Picasso advised, steal from the great.

This drum group from John Hopkins Middle School greeted gallery goers with strong, disciplined playing. The red building behind them is Studio @ 620.

620 was well-staffed, with people handing out the magazine, tables selling books and prints, drinks, and more, including matching viewers with youthful, well-trained docents.

On the left is a picture of many, but not all of the students who created the work shown in the exhibit, magazine, and book

On the left is Deontrey James who made the photograph at the top, titled "Ball Boy". A great shot framed through a fence (?) and the counterpoint of the blue ball works beautifully. One look into the work & faces of these students and you see what a fantastic program this is. 

Dakota Haas, "Soul Food", Jordan Park St. S.

Dakota Haas had several pictures in the exhibit. She composed this picture on the right very carefully, paying attention to the tonalities and colors. Note the harmony between the food, the cabinets and logo on the cook's apron. It's a tight and expressive composition.

On the left is A. Lawson posing by his work. He didn't say much, but his eyes were roving the room, observing, taking it all in, and that's how I chose to photograph him.










On the right is "Two-Faced", by Christian Miller.

On the left is "Miss Juamita", The Chattaway, by Abigail Altieri, a beautiful, insightful portrait. Note the sign overhead.

                            People at the Gallery Opening at 620. This was early. It got busier.

This program is in its fourth year, and if the past two that I've seen are any indication, they have many more to come. What a fine thing is happening at Midtown. The future of a community is being forged. Congratulations to everyone involved.

This Lego Weekend, October 14th, 15th and 16th

Salt Creek Annual Member's Show -  Members' exhibit curated by Lance Rodgers. At Salt Creek Artworks (where there are some studios available). Many member's studios will be open, too. Opens Friday, Oct 14th, 6-9 PM, 1600 4th St. South, St Petersburg.  Free.
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Annual Sale @ Graphic Studio - Once a year, USF's graphic studio divests itself from art in its collection for between 10%-60% off prior pricing. Friday, Oct. 14th, 10 AM to 9PM. This is not an auction, but a sale. Artists like William Wegman, James Rosenquist, Chuck Close, Alex Katz, Robert Rauschenberg, Vic Muniz, Leslie Dill, Ed Ruscha, and many others. 3702 Spectrum Blv, Suite 100, in Tampa on the USF Campus. Parking $5.Major credit cards are accepted.
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The Habit  @ Silver Meteor - (See prior entry on here) From award-winning playwright Wilson Loria. 8PM Friday-Saturday Oct 14th & 15th, 4PM Sunday, Oct 16th, when it is performed in Spanish. $12 in advance, $14 at the door. Silver Meteor Gallery, 2213 E. Sixth Ave, Ybor City. 727.656.8053.
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Femme Fatale @ The Bricks - Kick Start My Art's first all-women show. At the Bricks, 1327 E. Seventh Ave. Ybor City. Opens Saturday, October 15th, at 9PM. Free.
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Dunedin Wine and arts walk - Wine, food, entertainment, and a viewing of the Creature from The Black Lagoon. All at Dunedin on Friday, at 8:30PM.  Pioneer Park, Main St and Douglas St. Free.
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Reflections on Ringling, @ Art Uptown, Sarasota -  Works of art focusing on the Ringling site will be featured. Art Uptown, 1367 Main Street, Sarasota. Through Oct 29th. Free.
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Poetry Night @ Cafe Hey

Cafe Hey is a great Cafe/Eatery located on Franklin Street, just north of the Expressway and downtown Tampa. [Link]. The coffees, pies, Bahn Mi sandwiches and particularly the soups are first rate. Its popularity is partially due to its being a small, intimate and significant cultural hub, with regular art shows, movie screenings, concerts, and on Thursdays,  Open mic Night.  This is hosted by poetess Nyssa Hanger whose Doordtop Productions [Link], along with Cafe Hey and the performers,  makes these wonderful events possible.



The evening began with Nyssa doing a story of Pangea, which edged into Gaia territory, with the idea of the Earth as a kind of organism. It was told with the energized, beautifully expressed and timed style that is Nyssa's.

Brian Aurati read his poem "The End of the World", which touched upon the fact that everything's been done and made. Also, "Begin the Pantomime", which was very touching.

Larry Ludwig, musician and music teacher, played a folksy guitar. One line from one of his songs stayed with me: "For a while you feel safe", regarding the fragility and ephemerality of life. For the Brandon Library attack survivor, he sang a number he wrote titled "Living Angel". It was heartbreaking and heartwarming simultaneously. Beautiful.

Matthew

Matthew, who has a memorable voice, sang the lyrical "Lullaby" , about the gray zone between consciousness and sleep, and getting across it. He also sang another song about a girl with an outrageous body titled "Oh my Lord".

 The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on in Tampa and Nyssa opened up a comedic exploration of the subject.

Lan Smith satirized the OWS protests and had the crowd laughing.










Cole Bellamy did a comedy routine involving the OWS demonstrations, a poem about silverfish (maybe the only one ever!),

 J.B. Bell did poignant and funny comedy about threesomes and the balance of attractiveness, the built-in flashlight feature in a Blackberry, fights, horses and the way we humans 'love' them.





On the right, David W. ruminated on the idea of a Pig Latin Bible, Diaper-suited babies, Zombie-like DMV employees, and more. He ended with a patriotic poem titled "Breed of Combat Soldiers".



Ann, who did not want her picture on the internet (which is a shame because she photographs beautifully) did a marvelously expressive reading of a great story about how the Kangaroo became special and popular.

Zane told us about his life in relation to the war, his narrow escape from being in it, and about what it was like to be in Berlin in 1969. Peace-centered, beautiful stuff. He did a once-popular anti-war song by Country Joe and the Fish (I think).

The unspeakably cute Riva sang, in the picture with a little help from her friends, later, all on her own. She capably picked her way through songs like "Big Boss Man" & "Yellow Submarine". I went to see her play at the Gulfport Art Walk a day later.

Deb started with a cover of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold", then did a song of her own titled"OM", which was mysterious, haunting and meditative.

Ralph Ross did a sad and bittersweet song laced with the sense of loss, and forgiveness about a friend who overdosed.

 Mona did a very funny skit about her overweight bulldog, life in an apartment, the serious absurdities of being single, things like flirting in the Tampon aisle, and elapsed time since the last Ikea visit.

Chioke read a poem on Ennui, another by Sivia Plath, and Nyssa closed the evening.

The crowd at Cafe Hey

Congratulations to the poets, singers and comedians, Nyssa Hanger, and Cafe Hey for a wonderful evening.

This takes place on Thursday evenings at Cafe Hey, 1540 N. Franklin St. Tampa, from 7-9 PM.

"The Habit" Opens @ Silver Meteor Gallery

Award-winning playright, actor Wilson Loria's play "The Habit", directed by Ciara Carinci, opens at Silver Meteor Gallery on Oct 14th. This play will be performed this Friday and Saturday, Oct 14th & 15th,  then on Sunday the 16th, it will be performed in Spanish. It will also be performed the following weekend on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (In English). Oct 21st, 22nd and 23rd. Look for AT's This Weekend section on Thursday for more information. Silver Meteor is at 2213 E. 6th Ave. Ybor City. Tickets are $12 reserved, or $14 at the door. For reservations,

[From the press release] In a daring look at a religious woman facing the crossroads of her life, The Habit guides its audience from the familiar images of docile convent life to a path sprinkled with hints of a more profane one. Meeting a charming young man—more of the scoundrel type—at the hospital where she works as a nurse, she keeps hearing him telling his enchanting and magical stories. Suddenly, in a do-or-die move, she accepts his offer of eloping with him. However, as the play moves on, the audience is not really quite sure if HE is a figment of her imagination, or if SHE is a figment of his. Through music, dance, mime—following Loria’s idea of what theater should be—The Habit portrays, most importantly, a human being’s moment of truth, as everyone in the audience may have experienced at least once in their own lives.

The Last Picture Show @ Capricorn: The Tarot

Work by stairway @ Capricorn by S. Palladino

Sexual expresion in art is as old as....art itself. Capricorn Studios, which opened on St. Valentine's Day 2010, is a self-described "private, erotic gallery" is on the top floor of a nondescript three story building across the street from Ybor Square, which is the New Scientology HQ. It is one of those spaces that ends up looking much bigger inside than it looks from the outside. A good-size foyer welcomes you, then a hallway with rooms that are artist's studios (more like galleries) on one side, and another at the end.


The work is varied, though mostly centered around the flesh of solitary females, its pleasures and mortifications, with some notable exceptions. I recognized artists I had previously seen at the Ritz at Square One shows, and also at an ArtOn! event behind the History Museum in St. Pete. This type of imagery is very thin and slippery ice for most artists. It is easy to edge into kitsch.The show I went to see, the last one at Capricorn, was art centered on specific cards in the Tarot deck.

Jason Bridges and his work at Capricorn

On the left is artist Jason Bridges and his work. It was reviewed here barely two months ago [Link] at another show. His painting, he told me, is influenced by comic books, and has retained some of their graphic style. Jason incorporates pop, mythic and surreal themes into his work, often with a dark, edgy feel.

Work in the foyer

Work by Samantha Churchill

 This hanging figure is one of Samantha Churchill's sensuous wound aluminum wire sculptures.

Jason Bridges, "Death"

The Death card is not as final as it sounds: It is also about rebirth & starting over. Here we see a skeletal figure wrapped in a brilliant red garment with smiley faces all over it. In his right hand, a wilting flower, in his left, a very rare Mauser automatic pistol. Death appears to be on the march, and is framed by (Celtic?) concentric circles.

Catrina de Ville's High Priestess card is a digital composite of a Goddess figure with many arms, reminiscent of the Hindu Kali [Link]. She holds a cat o' nine tails, a sword, one adult and one child's skull, makes a mudra, holds a pistol, a jewel (Philsopher's Stone?) and what could be rubies (?). She wears enough arm bling to stock a small boutique. Lightning is striking her, but she is unfazed. She stares point-blank into the adult skull. This is a beautiful, well-designed and executed work.

Jason Bridges, "The Hermit"

On the left is another card interpretation by Jason Bridges, "The Hermit". He used the figure of an Easter Island Moa statue for his Hermit. These statues are 15-20 feet high, and were erected by the islanders, who had decimated their home ecologically. Toward the end, they built and erected scores of these heads, hoping the Gods would return.








On the right is The Fool on a child's tricycle with a wind-up bubble-blower in back, his faithful dog behind him, a rose in his right hand, and an unidentifiable object in his left, blithely Big Wheeling his way into a Tsunami. It is done in the familiar Hokusai Wave style [Link] . The Fool's headdress looks a little Mayan. Maybe this is an allusion to 2012.







[In the back room, the exhibitionist known as "The Senator", a late 50's distinguished-looking man who can be seen normally at some clubs wearing his lingerie, was Edenically naked. No fig leaf, and perpetually erect, he played the role of bizarre centerpiece and goodwill ambassador.]

On the left is the charming Daphne Haines who, with her husband Larry, own Capricorn Studios. The woman on the right was introduced to me as The Muse. I should have gotten her card. Daphne took a lot of time during the opening, walking me around, giving a detailed tour of her gallery, for which I am grateful. This is the last show at Capricorn, which is a shame, considering how interesting and energized it and the gallery are. Hopefully we will be seeing Daphne again soon in the Tampa art scene.


--- Luis