by Annabelle Numaguchi
Cisco Post Office,
Utah 1995
Patrick Paul René
Patrick Paul René
Cisco
Post Office,
Utah 2004
Patrick Paul René
Cisco
Post Office, Utah
2006
Patrick Paul René
flux view
once, a home
a refuge, a
gathering place
of family and friends
now, through time and neglect
it sits in ruin - but only to some
to others beauty is revealed
so, what do we have here
broken lathe, peeling paint
dots of colored ink on paper
a gathering of textures and colors
reflected light
mirrored emotions
unnamed thoughts
the image, any image
your image, mine
changes with
and is changed by
each new viewing
- Bruce Hucko
of family and friends
now, through time and neglect
it sits in ruin - but only to some
to others beauty is revealed
so, what do we have here
broken lathe, peeling paint
dots of colored ink on paper
a gathering of textures and colors
reflected light
mirrored emotions
unnamed thoughts
the image, any image
your image, mine
changes with
and is changed by
each new viewing
- Bruce Hucko
fLux photographers' biographies
Moab Happenings Artist of the Month
by Annabelle Numaguchi
Every artist captures the universal fascination with time, as an ephemeral state whose rate of passing depends on the perspective, human or geological. Another common element that unites these works is the use of juxtaposition.
Chris Conrad, Deborah Shank and Marian Boardley all captured the glacially slow pace of geological flux by photographing rocky landscapes, each pursuing this idea in a unique direction.
Conrad’s trio of black-and-white photographs work individually or as a triptych, with triangular forms appearing prominently and repeatedly. Conrad focuses in closely on portions of larger landscapes, emphasizing shapes and textures. He contrasts the fluidity of water through its reflections and the rippled sand it leaves in its wake with the rough durability of rock. This juxtaposition illuminates the paradox of water’s beguiling liquid state which is strong enough to erode rock.
Deborah Shank’s perspective captures the grandiosity of southwest landscapes, with her characteristic wide-format lens. Her images depict the subtle shifts in lighting by photographing each place twice during a different time of day. She also presents contrast in her images by capturing steam (ephemeral vapors) rising off rock in “Canary Springs, Yellowstone,” air perceived through rock in “Turret Arch Through North Window” and deep shadows and bright sunlight in “Cedar Breaks.”
In “1-hour Photo: Half Life of a Stegosaurus,” Marian Boardley also plays with the idea of geological flux through her subject matter, a plywood toy stegosaurus propped on river pebbles, leaning against sandstone. Her images focus on the interplay between geological forces and human presence, symbolized in the toy dinosaur and Dewey Bridge. Clearly interested in the tracks humans leave in their wake, she captures footprints in the snow on a rarely used bridge in “Melting Snow at Dewey Bridge: 25 Minutes.” To underline this idea, Boardley uses a nearly-obsolete pinhole camera to photograph her images.
Bruce Hucko diverges from his usual subject matter and focuses on the traces of past human presence by photographing dilapidated buildings. In “flux view,” Hucko depicts the skeleton of a structure whose parallel slats create a strong, linear flow of energy through the image. Pastel flakes of pigment on a piece of remaining drywall contrast with the starkness of the studs behind the wall. The peeling paint also evokes the image of a map, harkening to a globally universal experience in decaying human presence.
Patrick Paul René captures this same idea in a strikingly different way through his triptych of black-and-white photographs entitled, “Cisco Post Office, Utah 1995, 2004 and 2006.” The vantage point changes slightly in each photo, engaging the viewer to search out the similarities among the photos, which in turn accentuates the differences time has worn in the buildings and landscape.
Bill Godschalx also engages the viewer in a game of hide-and-seek by imbuing his photos with forthright symbols and images, including spelling out the titles with Scrabble tiles. Many of the symbols, are straightforward in meaning, but enough subtlety appears to reward more careful examination of the images, whose predominant colors are saturated red and yellow. In “Gather Ye Rosebuds,” the first line of Robert Herrick’s poem entitled “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” Godschalx juxtaposes this message with dried roses. In “The End of Time,” he mimics the deceptive fluffiness of an atom blast with the benign softness of sheep’s wool.
Brian Parkin focuses on the various forms of flow in human life in “fLux,” a series of ten photographs accompanied by a poem. He contrasts the mundane (body functions, cash machines) with the profound (death). He combines techniques, chiaroscuro, blurriness and overlapping an image, to illustrate entropy, the measure of disorder of the universe and the theme of his piece.
The arrangement of the works by the seven artists encouraged the viewer to constantly assess each photo with a fresh perspective. The black-and-white images taken by Conrad and René began and ended the sequence, while the saturated colors of Godschalx and Shank’s photography were interspersed with the subtler palette of Hucko and the photographic techniques of Boardley and Parkin. The two predominant themes, human and geological perspectives on change, were also intermixed together, avoiding didacticism and allowing the viewer to come to his own conclusions by assessing each unique visual exploration of “flux.”
.