October 2018 | visual art
Funk’s Grove Church
by Stephen Curtis Wilson
Steve is a graduate of the fine arts program at Illinois Central College, East Peoria, Illinois. He received his B. A. at the University of Illinois and is a juried Illinois Artisan through the Illinois State Museum Society. During his 35-year professional working career, he was a photographer, writer, graphic designer, and media relations specialist. Thirty-two of his 35 years were spent in the healthcare field where he was an on-call medical/surgical photographer, generalist photographer, researcher, and executive ghostwriter. He has received numerous awards for photography and publications. “I am a regionalist. I photograph the everyday – the familiar in unfamiliar places -traveling back roads across rural landscapes visiting towns and meeting folks along the way,” said Wilson. “This is where my heart lives. I am attracted to the simplest elements of color and design, the ironic, sometimes nostalgic, documenting structures and places, and often given to futile attempts to capture purely emotional visual inclinations. Dorothea Lange said, “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” That has held true. With each image, I discover a little more about me. I feel myself moving toward something; an understanding, a refinement.”
July 2018 | visual art
Placed Alone
Isolation Favors Reflection
Rechastened
— These images were photographed at the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Philadelphia, PA
by Michael Hower
Michael Hower is a photographer from Central Pennsylvania where he resides with his wife and two boys. His experience with digital photography began five years ago. Over that time, he has amassed a resume of over a hundred exhibitions and publications. His work has been featured in shows at the Pennsylvania State Museum, PA; Biggs Museum of Art, DE; Masur Museum of Art, LA; Marshall University, WV; and the Fitton Center for Creative Arts, OH. He had a solo show this past fall at the Rehoboth Art League entitled “Abandoned Places.” This series of photographs examines the abandoned prison cells of Eastern State Penitentiary. The Penitentiary subscribed to a theory of rehabilitation that proscribed confinement and a lack of interaction with other inmates. This ran counter to the prevailing system in the United States at the time where harsh physical punishment was the norm. Ideas of church and religious experience are embodied in the building and served as a guide for how prisoners should be rehabilitated: hallways looked like that of a church; low doorways required one to bow, seek penance from a greater power; a single small skylight lit each cell, a proverbial “eye of God.”
July 2018 | visual art
#1: Transitory Space, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Spring 2018
by Leah Oates
Oates has B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Fulbright Fellow for study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. Oates has had solo shows at Susan Eley Fine Art, The Central Park Arsenal Gallery, The Center for Book Arts, Real Art Ways, Artemisia Gallery, The Brooklyn Public Library and the MTA Arts & Design Light Box series at 42nd Street, NYC. Oates has been part of group shows in NYC at The Pen and Brush Gallery, Metaphor Contemporary Art, NYOC Gallery, 440 Gallery, Nurture Art Gallery, Momenta Art, Associated Gallery, Susan Eley Fine Art and at Denise Bibro Fine Art. Works on paper by Oates are in numerous public collections including the Harvard University Libraries, The Brooklyn Museum Artists’ Book Collection, The Walker Art Center Libraries, The Smithsonian Libraries and the Franklin Furnace Archive at MoMA, NYC.
July 2018 | visual art
Nighthawks on the Bus
by A.C. Koch
A.C. Koch works almost entirely in black and white, because colorblindness predisposes him to see the world in contrasts. Architecture and streetscapes offer an interplay of shapes and textures that can create a great sense of depth and drama in an ordinary scene. His photography was recently featured in a Westword article during a show of black-and-white prints at St. Mark’s Coffeehouse in Denver, CO. More of Koch’s photography can be found on Instagram @henry_iblis, and his photo blog: invisiblepony.blogspot.com.
July 2018 | visual art
Looking north from Lord Howe Island
by Jamie Derkenne
Jamie Derkenne is interested in photographing landscapes of solastalgia. The seas around Lord Howe Island off Australia’s East Coast are full of coral reefs, the most southerly part of the coral reefs that further north make the Great Barrier Reef. Lord Howe Island’s reefs are about the only ones off Australia not in imminent risk of dying because of global warming.
