Art
Photography exhibition to open at Risley Gallery in Litchfield
By Press Release
Sep 21, 2008 - 11:17 PM

Lawrence Russ - Ritual

The variety and depth of the contributions to the arts in Connecticut by Southport resident Lawrence Russ have been remarkable – as a writer, an educator, a performer, an administrator, and an advocate. Now, in the last five years, he has emerged as a photographic talent, winning a place for his work in some of the State's and the region's most distinguished juried exhibitions. An exhibition of photographs from a body of his work shot entirely in Southport, “Small Town, Edge of the Sea,” will be on display at the Risley Gallery of the Forman School in Litchfield, CT from October 4 through October 31, with an opening reception from 6-8 p.m. on Saturday, October 4, in the Gallery. Also featured in the Gallery at that time will be “Curious Conjunctions: Recent Landscapes” by Richard Armstrong, a friend and colleague of Mr. Russ’s.

The many juried exhibitions for which Mr. Russ’s photographs have been selected have included three of the Silvermine Guild’s annual Art of the Northeast exhibitions (open to all visual artists in the New England states, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania) and the Shoreline Arts Alliance's notable IMAGES exhibition. When work of Russ’s was chosen for the Silvermine Guild's SPECTRA National Photography Triennial by the Polaroid Collection's Curator, Barbara Hitchcock, Russ was invited by Silvermine to deliver the Gallery Talk for the exhibition. In the regional 2006 Annual Open Juried Competition of the Housatonic Museum of Art, juror Judy Kim, the Curator of Exhibitions for the American Federation for the Arts, awarded him First Honorable Mention.

The works by Russ in the upcoming exhibition are all of scenes and objects by the edge of the water at either Southport Harbor, the Southport Boatyard, or Sasco Beach in Southport. Although they contain no deliberate blurring or premeditated distortion, no computer-generated objects, they are often highly metaphoric, sometimes fantastical, and their provocative titles bear evidence of Russ’s talent as a widely-published poet.

Russ has written in an Artist Statement: "The images of mine that I value most partake of realism and surrealism, expressionism and abstraction. I aim to make photographs of objects and scenes that look as though they were discovered inside the soul as much as on the street or in the woods. I want them to be like the stories of E.T.A. Hoffman, in which common things prove to be other or more than they first appeared. In my work, a backlit icicle in a highway underpass may radiate sexual menace; a corroded harbor piling may resemble an African Madonna; strands of seaweed pulled by the current may seem engaged in an eerie dance. I want images that radiate what Ernst Haas called 'the poetic element.'”

Some of Russ's other accomplishments that our readers may have learned about in past years include his receipt of a Connecticut Commission Artist Grant for Poetry, his successful campaign for the passage of an Art Preservation and Artist Rights Act, his innovative and inspiring poetry programs (which, the New York Times reported, had "broadened the audience for poetry" in Connecticut), his role as the author of the principal catalogue essay for the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art's acclaimed "Art at the Edge of the Law" exhibition.

Richard Armstrong - Pegasus

Richard Armstrong’s panoramic photographs are on permanent display at such public venues as the Conservation Center of the Bantam Nature Preserve in Bantam, Connecticut and the headquarters of the State of Connecticut Department of Transportation in Newington. His work has been widely exhibited in Connecticut and Massachusetts, appearing, like Russ’s, in the SPECTRA National Photography Triennial of the Silvermine Guild Arts Center (for which his work was selected by Peter Magill of the renowned Pace/Magill Gallery in Manhattan), as well as in juried and invitational exhibitions at Hartford area venues such as Real Art Ways, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Pearl Gallery, and the University of Hartford. From 1995 through 2000, he was a co-owner of the S.A.S. Gallery in Great Barrington and Housatonic, Massachusetts, presenting the work of many photographers of local, regional, and national reputation.

In an artist’s statement for “Curious Conjunctions: Recent Landscapes,” Mr. Armstrong writes: “I’ve always been a photographer of the landscape. The landscape surrounds us and cannot be escaped. It includes contrasts of color and form, beauty and utility, and man and nature. It sometimes includes ironies or humorous conjunctions. This is not the classic landscape often pursued by painters and photographers; it is the landscape of the everyday. It is the direct and often unintentional consequence of our habitation, exploitation or casual use of the land.”

The Risley Gallery at The Forman School in Litchfield, which will host these photographers’ exhibitions, is a small, elegant art gallery bathed in natural light from the skylight that illuminates exhibits on display. The gallery was added to what is now the Johnson Art Center when the building was both renovated and enlarged in the early 1990s. In addition to works of art created by faculty, students and alumni of Forman, the gallery hosts exhibitions of work by select invited artists.

For more information about the exhibition, the Risley Gallery or the Forman School, contact Michael Yurgeles, Gallery Director, at (860) 567-6211, http://www.formanschool.org/allied_risley , The Risley Gallery is located on Forman Peirce Drive, off Norfolk Road, one mile North of the green in Litchfield, CT. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday from 10 am to Noon, or by appointment.

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