Black & White

  I always look forward to visiting the yearly Black & White exhibition at the New Mexico Art League gallery.  As the announcement says, it features black & white drawings and black & white photographs.  About half of the pieces are photographs, and both the digital and analog offerings are generally of very good quality.  All of the art is available to view online.

I am always a little surprised to find new to me analog talent given my years in the city.  In this show it is Kirk Conrad, who has a considerable body of work including two nice film-based pieces in the current exhibit and much more on his website. I was impressed by his style, and his compositional and technical skills.
 

Dan Shaffer is a regular at the B&W shows and he also turns up at most of the other exhibition opportunities in Albuquerque.  I thought his pieces on this occasion featuring some shadow pattern work were particularly nice.

Among the digital photographers I was particularly impressed by the work of Dallas Pottinger, Lisa McBride, Thomas Fore and Virginia Mahan.  I liked Radka Toscova-Tenigan's Dragonfly, but I thought he went a bit too far with digital enhancement in his Five Goats which produced some unpleasant background textures; perhaps over-sharpening?

I'm looking forward to returning to the gallery for the Meet the Artists reception, March 21, 3 PM to 6 PM.  Being able to view the actual prints is a much more satisfying experience than looking at the online reproductions.

 Perhaps I'll try to drag along some of my camera-toting friends.

New Mexico Art League - 3409 Juan Tabo Boulevard NE

Another "What is that camera?"

These pictures are part of the exhibit about Albuquerque's Special Collections Library.  They are printed from a large group of negatives in the Albuquerque Museum Photo Archives.

 The relevant clues are the camera shape, the controls on the top deck, the black lens barrel and the dates in the captions and in the Albuquerque Tribune article.

What is your guess?

Looking at Art in New Mexico

 Margaret and I spent a lot of time in galleries and museums in the last month.  The exhibition of Canadian Indigenous Art at the Albuquerque Art Museum was excellent.  A show of Black and White drawings and photographs at the New Mexico Art League was great fun.  

Margaret at Arts Thrive

Two exhibitions with great promise mostly brought disappointment.  The annual Arts Thrive benefit exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum had way too much art on the walls.  The Ways of Seeing exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe assembled classics from three private photography collections, but what might have been a great experience was ruined for me by abysmal lighting.  

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe

 At the Santa Fe exhibit there were prints from many of Photography's great pioneers including Alfred Steiglitz and Ruth Berhard.  Gertrude Kasebier's small photogravure, "Blessed are thou amongst women", was so poorly lit that I was left wishing I had brought a flashlight.  In fact, all the galleries in the great old Santa Fe building  were dim and dingy looking.  The big palladium prints by David Michael Kennedy at least showed that there is still good work being done today in the State.