Terence Falk’s Documentational Abstracts

In his first solo show with Robert Berry Gallery, Connecticut-based abstract and found still life photographer Terence Falk’s intriguing and documentational, almost evaluational, photographs of the world taken with a large format camera. They’re about the natural world, but break it down into abstract shapes and form, evoking the viewer to slow down and rethink the world right around them. There is beautify and mystery right around us; it just takes a keen eye to find it. The artist has done just that.

Falk’s first passion as an amateur zoology thrived due to his observant nature. He minded snakes, butterflies, flatworms, and anything else that caught his fancy, and learned to observe them on a macro level through a microscope. He taught himself about every species of animal that lived at the shoreline near his home, and the nearby ponds and streams. At sixteen, photography entered his life, and has served to reaffirm the natural connection to the natural world that he felt since he was six, albeit on a more introspective level.  He wanted to continue discovering the world, but even though the tools are different, the passion for observing has never ceased. In 1976, he bought a Lindholf 4” x 5” view camera, since he was drawn to subjects that beckoned a slower, more intense process of photographing. The artist was right back where he started observing the world through a microscope, but now armed with a camera and documentarian approach.

Remains to Be Seen, Installation view, 2022

Falk received his BFA in photograph at the University of Bridgeport in 1977. In 1986, the artist was awarded an Artist Residency Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar, Virginia and in 1996 he received The Weir Farm Visiting Artist Fellowship. His … Click here to read more

LGBTQ+ Creativity In 2022 and Some Fierce Rhetorical Questions

In thinking about my subject position as an elderly Black Gay man and a conceptual visual artist, I propose that LGBTQ+ Art is not just about LGBTQ, intersexual, androgynous or pandrogynous identities but it is also consisting of a creative, imaginative practice in which people who identify as LGBTQ+ see ourselves in the world in ways that makes the unconscious conscious and visible in the physical world. We courageously explore the realm of the subconscious and its contents and we inhabit various intersections of subjective experience and imagination with the Cosmic Feminine as we marvel at her ability to invent new forms and venture into uncharted territory that exists beyond hierarchical and binary categorization. Our creative impulse calls forth—out from the subconscious mind, through the repressive barrier, authentic revelations which capture the conscious mind and radically reorders, reframes or rejects what we previously claimed to know about ourselves and our connection to others and the Cosmos. As a result, LGBTQ+ creative activity moves us from private space into the public sphere, from the personal to the political in service to our individual evolution, the progress of contemporary organized society and the biosphere. The elan…the je ne sais quoi of it all is so absolutely sumptuous that I can hardly breath! But how will LGBTQ+ creativity be implemented to navigate the surprising shifts occurring in the current global system that’s unfolding before our very eyes?

In 2020, we are charged once again to creatively meet the challenges of another life-threatening global pandemic within the last 40 years, in addition to the existing threats to our right to exist. International drag superstar, The Divine David stated that death was used to give meaning to the 20th Century. Oh yes, he made a very … Click here to read more

By Carley Townsend and Beatrice Antonie Martino

Finnish photographer Jaakko Heikkilä doesn’t travel – he stays. Sometimes, he lingers long enough that you’ll fall asleep to the low hypnotic hum of the camera. At least, that’s what happened when Heikkilä photographed Jill, normally lively and hyperactive, suddenly still, quiet, untroubled. With a panoramic camera in hand, each shot takes a full minute, if not more, to develop, imposing a necessary stillness on each moment – a collection of fleeting eternities. Coaxed by a rhythmic repetition of “Lie down” – Click – “Rest your eyes” – buzz – “be still”– silence, Jill turns posing into repose. Heikkilä elicits a sense of magic as focus dances from detail to detail. Time stops, and the stillness deepens the relationship between viewer and subject. 

Jill in Her Living Room, 2003

I have been sitting a lot in kitchens with people, when nothing happens. Total silence. I like to meet people in that silence. It is more intensive, more intimate. I can come closer when nothing else is happening around. That sense of silence, that sense of slowness, it is the same as the photograph. The panoramic lens is rolling like that, silent, slowly. One image taking one minute.

We live in a world where everything is always moving, moving, moving. Everyone is racing to be better than the next. In a society where life is all about motion and distraction, silence and emptiness are revolutionary, radical acts. What does it mean to simply be

Heikkilä has mastered the act of radical stillness, connecting to the inherent beauty, integrity, and inner magic of the other – sitting opposite his camera lens. The subjects of Heikkilä’s photographs live whole and multifaceted lives with or without us – we are simply invited to linger … Click here to read more

Artist Q&A with Matt Roe

Matt Roe has been showing international for over 20 years in galleries, art festivals, and digitally. The world has changed since he started creating a long time ago along with reproduction techniques, technology has also fused its way into our general living space. This same process of human evolution has pushed him in that direction when it comes to art and his creative process. Roe has always had a passion for pushing the bounds of creative talent whether it be framing artwork, digital photography, or with abstract works in which he tries to push the bounds of each technique in their own regard.

Every creative path has advanced on its own including his passion for photography and creating digital artwork. The artist discovered a process where a photo is fused onto high gloss aluminum using attributes from the metal to highlight the details of the digital artwork, much the depth of brushwork with paint. This style comes to life in different lighting and produces a life of its own well beyond what the original photograph looked like.

“Driftwood Debris”, digital photography fused onto high gloss aluminum , 20 x 28 in | 51 x 71 cm, 2021

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

For me it’s not all about one artist at all. I’ve been influenced by many different artists through many different times in life. In my early days of creating, it was Dali, Dr Seuss, and Van Gogh. Dali was for his symbolism, Dr. Seuss for creating a whole world from what he saw in his everyday existence, and Van Gogh for his use of texture and color. Today I would say the street artists that make sociological commentaries in their work in all forms of creating, and Warhol for his … Click here to read more

Artist Q&A with Dan McCormack

Dan McCormack is a New York-based photographer who uses traditional 8 x 10 black-and-white film in a homemade oatmeal-box pinhole camera to create wide-angle distortions with the cylindrical focal plane. There is a sense of discovery and joy in his process, as the resulting images are unpredictable and surprising. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, the ordinary extraordinary. By then replacing the black-and-white values with subtle hues through successive pulling of curves in Photoshop, he interacts with and interprets the image. The “Nude at Home” is a subset of a larger pinhole-camera project that begun in 1998. In this series, he photographs the model nude in her own home, apartment, or studio, surrounded by her possessions for two-minute exposures. A collaboration between model and photographer, the images attempt to reveal an intimate portrait of the subject. He currently heads the photography program at Marist College.

“Caitlin_F_4-26-15–11AB”,  pinhole camera image, 23 x 20 in | 58 x 51 cm, 2015

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

Photographer Aaron Siskind is my favorite artist of all time. He was my basic photographer teacher, but more importantly he showed me what a personal vision is all about. He also gave me the sense to trust myself. His work speaks to an audience.

How did you become a professional artist?

I was never concerned about being an artist. I was concerned about making better photographs. The more and more that I worked at making more and more successful images I looked back and saw that I had become an artist.

What are the influences and inspirations in your work?

When I was a student, I went to every photography exhibition in a gallery or museum in Chicago where I was studying. I went to every library that I could get … Click here to read more

Artist Q&A with Marc Stamas

A born and raised New Yorker whose work has graced the pages from some of the most respectable outlets from around the world: from fashion, modeling campaigns, catalogs, celebrity, sports, et cetera. Marc’s been a professional photographer for most of his career and his motto is short and sweet, ‘I just want to shoot better tomorrow than I did today.’ But it was around 15 years ago that he moved into art, and I’ve had the pleasure to work with him at one of my galleries. I remember what he wrote in his bio, ‘People call me an Artist. I believe I’m more of a poet paying tribute to Rembrandt; dark, chiaroscuro with the use of my camera and brushes.’ That’s when I realized that he was hiding something about his art, and the pain was quite obvious within his body of work, and every time I would try and get him to open up, he would just walk away almost in tears and whisper, ‘It’s not about me, it’s about the art.’

“Mon Amour”, mixed media, 20 x 27 | 51 x 67 cm, 2010

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

It should be you; you should be focused on you and nothing else. But if you want to know two artists that I can relate to: one is Monet, but Rembrandt is where I hide, where the true artist comes alive.

How did you become a professional artist?

By people believing in my work, my words and discipline. All I ask is to be left alone. Is that asking too much while I do what I do best? But with all of my success it meant nothing to me, while the world around me came crashing down as tragedy has a … Click here to read more

Artist Q&A with Lynn Stern

Lynn Stern was born and raised in New York, where she continues to live. Stern works with black and white film and indirect, natural light; since 1985 she has been doing studio work, using a scrim of translucent white or black fabric. The Lynn Stern Archive is located at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson.

 “Quickening #19-40a”, Archival Inkjet Pigment Print, 38 x 43 in | 97 x 109 cm, 2019

Why did you become an artist?

I never considered it as a child. My father had a collection of abstract expressionist work that he began collecting in the late 40s through the early 60s, so I grew up with a lot of amazing work on the walls, and, though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, I found it intimidating:  it never occurred to me that I could become an artist – especially since I can’t draw! Then, in my early thirties I helped set up shots for architectural interiors – my first exposure to photography – and found that I loved composing through the lens. So, I started studying at ICP (the International Center of Photography) and quickly became hooked.

How is your work different than everything else out there?

What distinguishes my work as a photographer is that I think of the medium as one of light, not representation. For many years I have been working in my studio with diffused north light and a transparent white or black scrim, making whatever object is juxtaposed with it less literal rather than more so; my goal is to make visible a quality that is invisible – to transform the object from something seen that is valued for its striking outer aspects to something seen that is valued as the expression of something unseen, … Click here to read more

Artist Q&A with Florence Montmare

Florence Montmare was born in Vienna, and raised in Stockholm by Swedish and Greek parents who spoke German. At the age of 22, she ventured to New York City to pursue a career as an artist. She is based in New York and Stockholm and represented by Ivy Brown Gallery in New York.

Broken Horizon (Diptych)”, Scenes from an Island series, C-Print, 22.5 x 39 in | 57 x 99 cm, 2015

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

Hard to pick just one! I love Deborah Turbeville, Maya Deren, Tarkovsky, and of course Ingmar Bergman.

How did you become a professional artist?

I studied at the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography in New York and for a few years afterwards I worked closely with some of the faculty, Sam Samore, and Robert Blake assisting and simultaneously making my own art. I went on to create my studio practice working in New York and Stockholm and exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe, such as Saarland museum, Casino Luxembourg, and the Centre d’art Contemporain du Luxembourg among other places.

What are the influences and inspirations in your new works?

All my work starts from my personal experience. Film, performance, music, painting, sculpture and poetry inspire me. My influences are also my diverse cultural background, having grown up in Vienna and Stockholm; plus I speak several languages.

When is a piece finished for you?

I rely on my intuition entirely here. A piece is finished when I don’t have anything additional to say about a subject.

Florence Montmare, photo Maria Molin.

How is your work different than everything else out there?

I don’t believe that art can be isolated, rather, it connects to the collective consciousness. As photographers go, we have to relate … Click here to read more

Artist Q&A with Jeane Cohen

“Angel”, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in | 152 x 122 cm, 2020

Why did you become an artist?

I couldn’t help it. At this point I would have to say that being an artist chose me. It sounds cliché but that’s how it has worked out. I used to think I should do something more practical, I still think that actually, and so I worked in the social services and as a counselor for a long time, even recently at the Chelsea Foyer in Manhattan. I would work these jobs and then go to the studio to paint. When I had less time to paint I felt terrible. Eventually I realized that I should just prioritize painting so I’m on that track now. 

How is your work different than everything else out there?

My work has vitality and momentum. It is emotionally real, wild and alive. The union of the painted materiality and subjects are what give my painting a demanding immediacy. One important thing to understand about my work is that it transcends the traditional dichotomy of figuration and abstraction. Instead of operating within these binaries the works range in their loyalty to referential space and they track what I see as I move through the world. It is perceptual in that way and built of many sensations strung along together. The work resists an easy categorization although there are constantly emerging themes such as growth, nature, instability, transition, lurking danger, and survival. 
I think the work is unusual because it is earnest and generous without being didactic or thematically concise. The work gets to the reality of simultaneous contradictory experiences and the discomfort of interruption or not having an easy answer on hand. In Split Fires at Slag Gallery there are … Click here to read more