Photo-Chimera: Ten California Photographers

The Brand Library Art Galleries is pleased to present the exhibition Photo-Chimera: Ten California photographers, featuring more than sixty works by artists Nicole Belle, Angela Diamos, Nicholas Fedak II, Dona J. Geib, Robert Koss, Lesley Krane, Lis J. Schwitters, Don Suggs, Arlene Vidor, and Tal Yizrael.

Works of art in this unique exhibition challenge the popular expectations of photography as a reproductive, objective and even two-dimensional art form. Each of the photographers represented in the exhibit is actively engaged in changing and expanding the medium, combining advances in technology with the creative impetus to explore new and expressive ways of seeing.

Photo-Chimera guest curator Gloria Williams Sander, a Glendale resident, is a curator at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena and author of The Collectible Moment: Photographs in the Norton Simon Museum, published by the Yale University Press in conjunction with the Museum's exhibition which is on view through February 26, 2007.

EXHIBITION PROGRAMS

Opening Reception
Saturday, January 27, 2007, 4-7 pm
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Artists' Panel Discussion
Moderated by curator Gloria Williams Sander
Saturday, February 3rd, 4-5 pm
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Artists' Gallery Talk
Saturday, February 17th, 3-4 pm
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Plastic Fantastic! An Introduction to the Holga Camera
Saturday, February 17th, 4-5 pm
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Lesley Krane, assistant professor of art, California State University Northridge (and notable Holga photographer) will give an illustrated presentation on the Holga camera: its history, use, and the remarkable photographs it produces. Descended from plastic lens cameras like the Diana and Brownie, the Holga has an extremely simple design and operation, allowing photographers to concentrate on their artistic vision rather than high technology. She will show images of her own work and the work of her CSUN students as well as have cameras on hand to touch.

Entry to the exhibition and related programs is free and open to the public.

Nicole Belle Nicole Belle received her BFA in Fine Art Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology (New York) and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California, Riverside. Belle's most recent work combines traditional film-based images-essentially snapshots-with digital processing and hand stitching using colorful thread. Belle compares this stitching to the craft of embroidery and describes it as "an allusion to a domestic image-making technique of an entirely pre-photographic era." By adopting this practice the artist seeks to create a completely new experience of the snapshots, an emotional moment created by the conjoining of figures with thread. Disparate figures are bound with thread "sweaters" or "hair", stripping their identities and creating a new relationship that is both psychological and formal. Belle's work has been published in Patti magazine and is in the Rochester Institute of Technology Wallace Library Collection as well as many private collections across the United States.	Nicole Belle, Embroidery (Green #1), 2006 inkjet and thread 5.4" x 7.2"
Angela Diamos Angela Diamos earned her BFA in studio arts from the California Institute of the Arts and her MFA from California State University, Northridge in video/digital art. For several years Diamos endeavored to document the landscape of the desert town of Quartzsite, Arizona. Quartzsite experiences a phenomenon every year when its population swells from 2,500 in the summer to over 3 million in the winter. The landscape is significantly altered by this human migration and the artist finds beauty in the decay and loss exhibited in this cycle. Her c-prints are the product of photographic images captured with film and camera and watercolor paintings based on the photographs. Photograph and watercolor are scanned and the two images combined digitally to create evocative landscapes that are part documentary and part fiction. Diamos feels that each medium, having its own inherent, descriptive quality is critical to the final work of art. It is "a hybrid approach between the eye, the hand, and the computer." Diamos' work has been exhibited at many private and educational institution galleries. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at Woodbury University and California State University, Northridge.	Angela Diamos, Relict, 2005 c-print 13" x 19"
Nicholas Fedak II Nicholas Fedak earned a bachelor's degree in art at California State University Northridge and an MFA in photography from Otis Art Institute of Parson's School of Design. Fedak creates his ethereal work by re-photographing old family and found photographs. He creates new negatives as positive Kodalith transparencies, often replicating select parts of the original image in the final work of art. [Kodalith is a trademark name for a series of high contrast films used in the graphic arts.] An old daguerreotype or tintype re-photographed and developed using the positive Kodalith process is a rebirth for photographic subjects long forgotten. The artist describes his work as "transparent and fleeting, as is memory and the intangible, evanescent past" and he finds great pleasure in giving new life and meaning to these haunting historical fragments. Fedak has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Southern California and has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times and other notable publications numerous times.	Nicholas Fedak II, Passerby, 2005 positive kodalith transparency 32" x 40"
Dona J. Geib Dona Geib has a BFA and an MA from California State University Northridge where she specialized in advanced experimental techniques in printmaking and photography. Her current work is the result of a series of manual and digital creative processes. She scans images of her own sculptures, photographs or prints, digitally manipulates the scanned image, transfers the new image onto wood or other material, and then further works up the pictorial surface using encaustic and metals. These vivid and complex multimedia creations are a sublime fusion of the painter's art of layering space and form through color and texture, of the printmaker's serial production, and of the photographer's manipulation of images. Geib has been active in the Los Angeles art community for over 20 years and has exhibited her art work locally and internationally, including a solo show at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan.	Dona J. Geib, Hive Fortune, 2006 photographic transfer with encaustic and gold leaf on corrugate 7.5" x 11" (unframed)
Robert Koss Robert Koss has a BA in studio art from the University of California, Irvine, and a MA from California State University, Northridge. Koss' work explores the concept of photographic space. For the artist, this space is "illusionary, inviting touch but untouchable, suggesting depth but flat." His current work simultaneously reveals micro and macro views of the urban environment with images that capture reflections from irregularly cut pieces of mirror. These images toy with the viewer's perception of space and depth. Koss has exhibited widely in the Los Angeles area and was awarded the prestigious Aaron Siskind Foundation Photographer's Fellowship in 1994.	Robert Koss, Refraction O, 2005 color photograph 24" x 30"
Lesley Krane Lesley Krane earned her BA in studio arts from UCLA and her MFA from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. Krane's current body of work is made using a plastic "Holga" camera. The artists finds that the so-called limitations of the primitive Holga camera liberate her from technical concerns, allowing her to focus on lighting, composition, and most importantly, content. Krane prints each image onto two standard uncut sheets of 8 by 10 inch photographic paper; a simple hand sewn running stitch joins the two sheets together. According to the artist, the joining of these two images creates a "non-linear narrative; the obscure and sometimes out-of-focus photographs evoke the slippery and subjective nature of memory." Krane is an Assistant Professor at California State University Northridge and has exhibited extensively in the Los Angeles area. Her work is featured in Christopher James' The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes (Delmar Press, 2002).	Lesley Krane, chair (los angeles), 2006 silver gelatin prints, thread 10" x 15"
Lis J. Schwitters Lis Schwitters earned a BA in photo-communications at California State University, Fullerton where she studied under professor Darryl Curran and visiting professor John Szarkowski. As an artist influenced by modernist photography and the Russian Constructivist movement, Schwitters uses both traditional and digital photographic methods to create her work. Currently she is working with cyanotype, a non-silver photographic process that uses iron salts, ultraviolet light and oxidization to produce a rich prussian blue-colored print. The mirrored repetitious patterns that Schwitters creates are inspired by the kaleidoscope. The specific motifs are culled from humanistic themes and, as she explains "these images, reflecting backwards and forwards, are placed in the context of life's experiences." Schwitters has exhibited widely in Southern California and at locations across the country, including the Little Gallery at Utah State University, the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City, and the Lancaster Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. To learn more about Schwitters' work visit www.geocities.com/lis_schwitters	Lis J. Schwitters, A Pledge of Alliance, 2001 cyanotype 20" x 20"
Don Suggs Don Suggs earned a BA, MA, and MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been creating art in multiple media and teaching drawing, painting, sculpture and color theory at notable institutions across the country for many years. Since 1983 Suggs has been teaching in the art department at UCLA. Suggs describes the body of work which will be shown in Photo-Chimera as "Hexane photographs." These large scale works are "constructed in a "hexane" configuration: a six-sided pattern of overlapping 5" squares." Suggs takes dozens of photographs at the same public location so that "a fixed camera records the changing crowd over a pro-tracted period". These negatives then become the basis for the five inch squares that are used to recompose the photograph, in which "it is always the crowd, rather than the landscape, which shape-shifts." The final image depicts "a plausible naturalism, at least on first inspection," however a closer look reveals that the works are as much about pattern as depiction. Suggs is represented by the L.A. Louvre Gallery in Los Angeles. The career retrospective Don Suggs: One Man Group Show will be on view at Otis College of Art and Design's Ben Maltz Gallery from April 14 to June 23, 2007. To learn more about Sugg's work visit www.lalouver.com/html/suggs_bio.html	Don Suggs, Light Girl (Beuys' Ghost) [detail], 1997 gelatin silverprints, polyvinyl acetate, acrylic varnish on gessoed panel 42" x 137"
Arlene Vidor Arlene Vidor is an emerging artist who has been experimenting with a variety of photographic processes. Most recently she has been using digital tools in combination with traditional chemically processed film-based images. The resulting composite or compound photographs give us the opportunity to view natural and human-constructed environments without regard for the constraints of time and space that normally define the landscape. Vidor is particularly interested in depicting the built environment and is inspired by her work as President of the Glendale Historical Society. Vidor is also a founding member of the Tropico Artists Collective, which is located in the famed Tropico neighborhood (now Adams Hill) where Edward Weston opened his first studio	Arlene Vidor, Intelligent Design at 80 mph, 2005 digital photograph 19" x 13"
Tal Yizrael Tal Yizrael earned a degree in photography and digital media from Hadassah College in Jerusalem and an MFA at Claremont Graduate University in California. Yizrael creates photographs, photograms and photo installations, all of which express her underlying concern for the basic elements of art as she sees them: time, light and substance. The artist uses soap bubbles in her images, capturing their transient beauty in forms that are temporary and fragile. To the artist, "[the darkroom] is a magic palette." She develops the final prints while placing bubbles over the negatives or the slides. The bubbles change their forms quickly and they are captured as they age and transform. In the artist's own words, "I construct my landscapes, manipulate them, and maintain a dynamic dialogue with their ever-changing fragile substance." Yizrael has exhibited her work widely in Israel and more recently has been exhibiting in the Los Angeles area. To learn more about Yizrael's work visit www.talyizrael.com	Tal Yizrael, Felt Snow I, reversal, 2006 (traditional) c-print and cliché vere 22" x 31"