Around the World, Around the Corner

Around the World, Around the Corner was a photographic exhibition in the University Library Gallery that showed from February 2 - 27, 2016.  The exhibition featured the work of the Photography Exhibit Group from the Renaissance Society, which is an organization that collaborates with Sacramento State to promote learning and community involvement among older adults.  Currently, the Renaissance Society has over 2,000 members and eighty seminars, the material of which is decided by the members.  The Photography Exhibit Group has fourteen members and was led by Tom Monahan.  The photographs on display in the show were the result of classes and seminars hosted by the Society that covered digital photography, post-processing, printing, and the exhibiting of photographs.  As suggested by the show's title, the photographers centered upon a theme of viewing the world through photography to unify a wide range of subjects.

The layout of the exhibition felt organized and professional.  All of the photographs were matted and placed behind a glass frame.  Each of the fourteen photographers' work (a group of five or six photographs) was also separated by wooden dividers, which were noticeable enough to create a visual distinction between the different photographers yet were not so conspicuous as to ruin the visual flow and unity of the exhibition.

The exhibition's title card begins with six photographs by Stephen Levine (he also had a standalone photograph, Spirit of '76, underneath the didactic panel to the right, which showed men dressed in colonial outfits with the American flag who may be walkers in a Fourth of July parade).  The six photographs show macro perspectives of various flowers, one of which has a bee inside of it.  The "world" Levine presents is shown on a smaller level, which consists of flowers and insects that might otherwise be overlooked.

Photographs by Stephen Levine. 

Walking clockwise in the gallery, the next group of photographs belongs to Jackie Carroll, whose titles all include the word, "reflections," such as Golden Pavilion Reflections (upper-left), Repose and Reflections (upper-center), and Patterned Reflections (bottom-center).  "Reflections" in this group can be viewed in various ways.  First, there are literal reflections in the water in most of the photographs.  However, there is one photograph that stood out to me, Repose and Reflections, which is devoid of water but includes a stone sculpture of a Buddha in the grass, perhaps alluding to "reflections" in the introspective sense.  All of Carroll's photographs appear cohesive with their quietude and stillness, which are qualities often evoked by water reflections.  Her way of viewing as seen through her photographic lens are also meditative and seem deep in thought.  Patterned Reflections, for instance, takes a fairly ordinary subject of pond water, and turns it into a multi-layered and abstract mosaic.  With her focus on the water's surface in most of the photographs, Carroll appears to invite viewers to observe and contemplate reality from an alternative perspective, just as one can see "another world" reflected in the water from the objects and landscape above its surface.

Photographs by Jackie Carroll. 

Mike Macias's collection of photographs also focuses on nature with its inclusion of three birds, a close-up view of roots, and a scene in which an abandoned boat is being overtaken by water plants, appropriately titled as Derelict.  There is a sense of calmness in Macias's photographs much like Carroll's, but Derelict also has a sense of a quiet, steadfast force as the plants have both unassumingly yet noticeably reclaimed the boat on the Sacramento River Delta.

Photographs by Mike Macias. 

John Barry's oceanside photographs evoke nostalgia and whimsy with their picturesque views of coastal towns and cities like Capitola, Santa Cruz, and Monterey Bay in California.  Nostalgia is carried further with one photograph titled In the Style of Norman Rockwell, which shows an artist in front of an easel, busy at work by the sea.  Complementing In the Style of Norman Rockwell, is Beach Artist, which is located underneath the former, which shows another person creating art but this time directly on beach sand.  The other photographs show remnants of a human presence, such as beach chairs and boats.  Barry's photographs pay homage to both the oceanside and the people who inhabit it.

Photographs by John Barry.

Laurene Fitzpatrick also chooses nature as a subject, but this time, the actual marine life, not the landscape, takes center stage.  Like Macias's pictures of the three birds, Fitzpatrick's depictions of marine life are portraits that showcase the single animal in the frame, the color of the animal and the scene, and even the "character" and personality of the animal.

Photographs by Laurene Fitzpatrick.

 Jane Steele's photographic perspective is similar to Barry's in that she chooses waterside communities as her locale and subject.  However, whereas Barry's showed coastal communities in California, Steele has also included views of the ocean by the Netherlands and canals and locks in England. 

 Photographs by Jane Steele.

Melissa Green takes a perspective of an uninhabited and remote natural world with her photographs.  Within her group of photographs, Green has also chosen to display two of them on the far right as triptychs, which create their own interior dialog.  Both of these triptychs depict rocks as main subjects, but the relative lack of surroundings creates an interesting and disorienting view where the actual location of the subjects is unclear.  There is a surrealness to the triptychs because the subjects are real, but due to the ambiguous location of the subjects and where the viewer/Green stands in relation to them, both scenes feel like there is something otherworldly or "off" about them.  Further heightening the sense of surreality is that the sections of the triptychs do not exactly line up in a smooth panorama.  Additionally, the division into thirds could also allude to the "rule of thirds," which are guiding lines used to compose and frame a scene in photography.  

Photographs by Melissa Green. 

The adjacent groupings of photographs by Melissa Green and Marilyn Hodges create an interesting dialog because they both showcase the natural landscape and show a view of the night sky in the same place within each group (both may even show the Milky Way).  Hodges photographs are like an opposite to the macro photographs in this exhibition (such as Levine's) in that they show large-scale scenes of landscapes or space.  Green and Hodges both chose landscapes (and starscapes) as subjects, but Hodges leans towards the monumental.  For example, the clouds from a prairie rainstorm in Montana (lower-left) and the rising steam from where lava has reached the ocean (lower-right) show the power of nature, and the landscapes in Hodges's photographs evoke awe and wonder with their scale and presence.

 

Photographs by Marilyn Hodges.

Mary Henwood also looks to nature for her photographic subjects but more specifically to either culture of farming or ranching.  Henwood shows imagery associated with these occupations and lifestyles, such as bridles and saddles.  Farming and ranching is not complete without its associated animals as well, such as a cow in the upper-right (which is humorously paired with the photograph's title, In Yer Face), a longhorn in the bottom-center, and a horse in the lower-right.  All of Henwood's photographs pay tribute to the small town of Smartville, CA and its rural environment.  

  

Photographs by Mary Henwood. 

Ron Anderson offers another world view by exploring the cultures (and arts within those cultures) in Cuba, Italy, and Croatia.  For example, he depicts a lively atmosphere in the Santeria Church in Cuba, where he has captured a woman mid-dance in the two center photographs.  Anderson celebrates other cultures in Street Musician (upper-right), which shows a man in Italy playing what appears to be the violin, and Singers, which shows the title's subjects on a street in Croatia.  

 Photographs by Ron Anderson.

Tom Monahan, who was the lead organizer of Around the World, celebrates the local culture of Sacramento.  He shows different places and venues in Sacramento, such as the Crocker Art Museum in the upper-right, the Capitol Mall in the upper-center, and graduation day in the Memorial Auditorium in the lower-right.  

 Photographs by Tom Monahan.

Jeff Hendy, like Anderson, focuses on people and culture but looks not to the West but to the East in Japan.  Hendy shows many aspects of Japanese culture in his photographs, such as a dancer from the Awa Odori or Awa Dance Festival, shrines in Takachiro and Dainichi-ji (lower-left and bottom-center, respectively), and street vendors (lower-right).  Hendy and Anderson also share a photographic approach to both document people and cultures and celebrate them at the same time.

Photographs by Jeff Hendy. 

John Patrick Ryan also explores international culture by examining different locales, such as the Keukenkof Garden in the Netherlands (upper-left and upper-right), the Millesgarden in Sweden (lower-right), the Pompidou Center and Arc de Triomphe in Paris (upper-center and lower-left, respectively), and the Montreal Botanical Gardens of Light (bottom-center).

Photographs by John Patrick Ryan.

Photographs by Craig McCulloch round out the Around the World exhibition.  McCulloch also pays homage to the city of Sacramento like Monahan in Biker Dog, which features a veteran and his appropriately-dressed dog on the back of his motorcycle for the Veterans Parade, Tower Bridge (upper-center), and Sacramento Waterfront (lower-left).  However, whereas Monahan stayed in the Sacramento area for his photographs, McCulloch features subjects and places from the towns of Loomis and Folsom for his remaining three.

  

 Photographs by Craig McCulloch.

I enjoyed this exhibition because the viewing experience was like taking a trip around the world, which was the intent of the Renaissance Society members.  Specifically, the actual space of the library and the photographers' work as one collective could represent a world, and within that world, there are smaller worlds represented by the fourteen groups of photographs by the different photographers.  I felt that the theme of local and global travel and experiencing different cultures and "worlds" was an effective way to unify the photographs because there truly were a wide range of subjects within the show.