New Shows

There’s a new collection of my photos hanging in the Gallery. Some will be up until September 14th, at which point they will be replaced by a group of paintings from the 6th Annual Downtown Bellingham Plein Air Paint Out.

I’ve chosen the currently displayed images from those I’ve shot over the last couple years, a few from longer ago than that. When images I’ve recorded have only been in existence for a short time, I often have difficulty judging which of them effectively express something of substance, and which are “flashes in the pan” so-to-speak. At times I discover a photo from many years ago which, at the time, held no particular interest, but which I suddenly see with new eyes, thereby noticing significance that had never been apparent to me previously. For this reason, I find an occasional perusal of old photos to be an entertaining pastime, a little like panning for gold, or perhaps reminiscent of my childhood memories associated with hunting Easter eggs.

My computer screen-saver has brought to attention another phenomenon relating to archived photographic work. It’s set up to run a slide show of the images stored on my hard drive, picked at random. There are a couple thousand of these images available, and the effect is that images pop up on the screen juxtaposed completely out of time and subject sequence. Since I normally view them in the order they were recorded, this accentuates the “new eyes” perspective on each image.

We have a large collection of my photographic prints stored at Mindport, which I add to periodically. Sometimes I choose a group of images which Art Director, AnMorgan Curry, hangs in the gallery. When there isn’t a specific group to be shown, I encourage staff members who spend time in the display area to chose photos from the reserves and hang them as they please. It’s always interesting to me to see which ones get chosen, and in what combinations they show up on the walls.

The current batch on the walls of the gallery, as mentioned earlier, were my choice, a few of them grouped according to my specification, the rest hung to suit AnMorgan’s excellent taste. If you wish to see them all, please visit before September 14th, when AnMorgan will be hanging the work of the Plein Air painters in our gallery. About a third of the photos in this show will remain up for some unspecified time beyond the 14th, and there are also a number of my other photos on the wall in the interactive exhibits area.

Kevin Jones