Sniedze Rungis/Main Room and Melody Allen/Salon, Photography and Pastel Drawings
Aug 2007 to Sep 2007, Oakwood Neighborhood
SNIEDZE RUNGIS Showing in the Main Room: The Gold Standard-Photographs
This small exhibit is intended as a homage to a very fine teacher – Jim Riegel, head of the photography department at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
Initially spurred on by an Arts Fund grant from the Kalamazoo Arts Council, I began my apprenticeship with Jim two years ago and discovered that this master photographer – primarily recognized for his exquisite and sometimes amusingly grotesque depictions of the naked human – was also an outstanding teacher.
Whereas some teachers hold their knowledge close to the vest, their nuggets of information grudgingly dispensed only on a need-to-know basis, I found Jim to be astonishingly generous and genuinely curious about my development. Whereas for 30 years I had taken nary a photograph, under his tutelage I began to amass hundreds of photographs. And then he threw open the doors to the Ali Baba’s cave of Photoshop! But Jim’s generosity does not exclude a demand for an implied Gold Standard in his student’s work (thus the gold frames).
On these walls you will find the orchards west of Kalamazoo and portraits of trees all the way from the shores of Asylum Lake to the shores of the Baltic. There are also other portraits: my beloved mother; Lad Hanka, Kalamazoo’s very own wizard of the intaglio print; Paris Hilton (an ‘appropriated’ piece in art-speak) prisoner of Hollywood Hills; ‘found objects’ – a portrait of a young woman I uncovered at the Goodwill and transformed into Mary Magdalen through the magic of Photoshop, likewise a swan Brent Spinks found floating dead in a lake, resurrected to the sky; the miniatures of the landscape of Los Angeles I wish I could have printed as large as three story buildings – the scope of everything in this bizarre city of angels at the end of the world where size is indeed everything; and at the other end of the spectrum – diminutive windows opening on to a moment in autumn, a moonlit night here in our very own Michigan.
MELODY ALLEN Showing in the Salon: Pastels and Ink Drawings, Represented by third image below.
Artist Statement
Although the subjects in my still life paintings continue to change, working with sunlight and shadow continues to intrigue me. I love the dramatic contrast between light and dark and the interesting shapes the shadows can create. I include only a minimum number of objects in compositions as I hold true to the idea that “less is more.” Limiting the number of objects allows them to become more important than the common, utilitarian objects they are. They become somewhat monolithic in scale. Bringing them close to the picture plane emphasizes this feeling.
This series of teapot paintings was spawned by a trip to China last summer. I saw many inspiring sights during my visit and wondered at the time how these would influence my work. In one of the markets, there were tables piled high with small, decorative teapots as if they were as worthless and mass-produced as cheap toys. I brought a few small teapots home in my suitcase and acquired more here in Michigan. These paintings resulted from that collection.
