Month: September 2021

This week from Jane Deering news of the final summer show of 2021:

Capping the summer season of exhibitions @ Jane Deering Gallery is The Cyanotype …. and the end-of-summer blues. The gallery will host an Open House Saturday September 4th from 1:00-5:00pm at 19 Pleasant Street in Gloucester.

Artists Elizabeth Awalt and Tom Fels celebrate the luscious range of blue produced by unique cyanotypes and pay tribute to both Anna Atkins (long associated with the medium) and French photographer Charles Aubry. Fels’s work will also include several images related to Cape Ann.

THE CYANOTYPE

How often we think of Anna Atkins, the 19th-C botanist and photographer, when talking of cyanotypes. Atkins is strongly associated with the medium. Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, which Atkins privately published in 1843, has long been considered the first book illustrated with photographic images, cyanotype photograms of seaweed. I am delighted to bring to light a different algae, Elizabeth Awalt’s cyanotypes of dried kelp which the artist found in the cold, nutrient-rich waters near her summer studio in Maine. Akin to her paintings, Awalt’s cyanotypes ‘express her connection, curiosity, and concern for the natural world.

Tom Fels, of Vermont, first learned about cyanotypes through his work as a curator and writer with 19th century photographs. Fels writes ‘In my attempt to capture some shadows on my home, I realized that cyanotypes were the right medium to employ…The appeal of the cyanotype comes in part from its color, which viewers often find spiritual and relaxing, as well as its ability to capture the nuances of movement inherent in working with living plants. Its interest to me was also in the process, which is fairly simple and can be done mostly outdoors.” His series Homage to Aubry is inspired by the still lifes of the French photographer Charles Aubry.

Gallery hours: Friday & Saturday 1-5pm; Sunday 1-4pm and by appointment at 917-902-4359 and info@janedeeringgallery.com.

ELIZABETH AWALT

Elizabeth Awalt grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and moved to Boston to attend Boston College. As an undergraduate, she studied Fine Arts at Boston College where she returned to teach and became a tenured professor. She received her MFA degree at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by several fellowships including the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo, and MacDowell and the Millay Colony. She has been the recipient of both a Massachusetts Artists Fellowship in Painting and an Individual Artist Grant in Painting from the National Endowment of the Arts. Awalt’s work is in numerous public and private collections in the US and abroad. The artist maintains a studio in Concord Massachusetts and northern Maine.

• 

• 

• 

• 

TOM FELS

Tom Fels, independent curator and writer specializing in American culture, photography, and art, has worked as consultant and guest curator to a number of museums, including the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1986 he was named a Chester Dale Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1998-9 a Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library. He has organized more than fifty exhibitions, and is the author of numerous catalogs, articles, and books including Sotheby’s Guide to Photographs (1998), and more recently works on contemporary American history. His large cyanotypes are represented in several museum and private collections, including the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fels lives and works in southern Vermont. In 2013 he was writer-in-residence at the Gloucester Writers Center. Since 2014 he has shown with the Jane Deering Gallery.

• 

• 

• 

from the release