Archive for the 'Announcements' Category
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
I’m excited to announce a new series of work, presented as a solo exhibition at Kellar Mahaney Gallery. All the images are from one day in the Grand Tetons. I previously wrote about that day here. Here’s the info:
Andy Chen: Snow Day
Opening reception Feb 5, 5-9pm
exhibit continues through Mar 6
Kellar Mahaney Gallery, Zionsville, IN
SNOW DAY
Snow Day is a series of photographs taken among the Grand Tetons in Wyoming on an afternoon’s walk to Taggart Lake. We were nineteen days into a two-month wilderness road trip in October of 2009 and these photos capture the season’s very first snow.
In the months prior, we converted a Chevy cargo van into a camper, outfitting it with a pop-up top, bed, stove, bathroom, backpacking gear and guitar. I brought along my camera and my wife Hannah (who was five months pregnant then) brought along a sense of adventure.
There isn’t anything much better than fresh snow to pique my curiosity of transitions, mystery and wonder. We had hiked for several days before in wearing, drizzling rain. We went to bed in anticipation and we woke up to a frosted landscape. It was a snow day.
Posted in Announcements, Camper Van Chuck, On The Road | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
INvision Casserole 2010 is here, with a reception this Friday. I’ll be showing a few pieces from an ongoing project of portraits taken with my cell phone camera.
There’ll be new work from nine photographers. Come on out and join us. I’ll be bringing a breakfast casserole to add to the delicious offerings. We’ll eat with our mouths and eyes and warm each other’s hearts. How ’bout that!
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Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
“Where the Fairies Are” is opening as a gallery show! It would be my pleasure to have you join me at Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage this Friday for the opening reception.
Where the Fairies Are
Opening reception Dec 4. 6-10pm
Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage
Circle Center Industrial Complex
1125 Brookside Ave C7, Indianapolis, IN
Exhibit continues through December 23 January 23, 2010
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Friday, November 13th, 2009
It’s been awhile since the last post. I don’t have an editor watching over my blog so that frees me to subject you to a rambling update.
The outdoor art festival season has finished for the year. There were a crazy few weeks, including a two week stretch where I participated in three art fairs and two gallery shows. Whew. Along the way, I was selected for a few awards, a nice surprise:
Best in Show – Penrod Arts Fair
Best of Show – Carmel International Arts Festival
Second Place – St. James Court Art Show 3rd St Section
With the art fairs waning, I got reacquainted with having free weekends. Let me tell you, it is so nice to have free weekends. Off to the woods we went. We had some nice overnights in the Hoosier National Forest and around Lake Michigan.
During one of the days at Lake Michigan, I took some casual shots that I didn’t think would amount to much. But after I got home, something unexpected about them stood out. Ideas come like that sometimes. When I’m not even serious, something different is revealed that could lead to a significant direction.
Up next: I’m participating in two holiday shows, one tomorrow and another next Friday. I wanted to offer something geared towards gift giving, so I’ve been making small prints framed to 8×10″. Until now, I haven’t ever shown my work so small. But, now seeing the completed work – they’re really fun. After years of making bigger and bigger prints, it’s nice to have something little and intimate. You can hold it in the palm of your hands.
Also, I’m teaching a Digital Fine Art Printing Workshop next weekend. There are still openings available. You can find the details about the holiday shows and the printing workshop at my events page.
And last, but not least: My project, Where the Fairies Are will be exhibited next month at Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage. Whoohoo! More details to come.
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Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
A Chance Meeting – from Where The Fairies Are
My project Where The Fairies Are is now on the gallery section of the website. View it here.
I’ve been exploring themes of enchantment for a few years now, so you may guess that I’m really quite excited to present a collection of this work.
These photographs portray natural settings as more than what we expect them to be. They are a hope of things mystical and mysterious. If fairies existed, where would they be? They would be on the edge of a world that is breaking into ours. They would be among the miraculous that we take as mundane.
There will be opportunities to see pieces from this collection in the next couple of months. I’ll keep you posted.
Posted in Announcements, Images, Where The Fairies Are | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 20th, 2009
I’ve been putting together a body of work exploring the notion of fairies. Not so much what they are, but why we may need them and what would it be like if we had it in mind to actually look. A couple of years ago, I wrote about the process of re-enchantment. I’ll be posting some more entries on the topic and new images from this series. For now, let us let the story begin…
Where the Fairies Are
There is a wonder in the world around us, a wonder that has been neglected and obscured. In the bustle of our lives, we have let that sense of wonder decay. We have become strangers with the notion of enchantment. To discover something enchanting is to take in, in a way that changes the very representation of the thing.
These photographs portray natural settings as more than what we expect them to be. They are a hope of things mystical and mysterious. If fairies existed, where would they be? They would be on the edge of a world that is breaking into ours. They would be among the miraculous that we take as mundane.
Perhaps by imagining, we can bring into existence what is already there, waiting for us to become re-enchanted.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries”
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Posted in Announcements, Where The Fairies Are | No Comments »
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
There are three excellent photography shows opening in central Indiana galleries this weekend, with receptions on Friday, July 3rd. Go out and celebrate the goodness!
Pictura Gallery
Pictura Gallery in Bloomington is opening their Landscape Invitational show, featuring some of my new favorite photographers. I’m there as well, but well, I’m not a new favorite of mine, er.. I suppose.
Jul 3 – Aug 4
Landscape Invitational, Pictura Gallery, Bloomington, IN
Opening Reception: Friday, July 3, 2009 5 – 8pm
Dean Johnson Gallery
I also have a piece in the Black and White show, opening at the Dean Johnson Gallery:
Jul 3 – 30
Black and White Show, Dean Johnson Gallery, Indianapolis, IN
Opening Reception: Friday, July 3, 2009 5 – 9pm
“Not everything is seen in black and white, but it is in this show. Check out some of the best photographers in Indianapolis as they focus on the purest form of their art, in our Black & White exhibit.”
AV Framing Gallery
It would also be well worth your time to visit the AV Framing Gallery, with the debut of a new photography space by my good friends John and Joslyn Crowe.
Jul 3 – Aug 22
Life Has Moments: intimate and client work by John Crowe and Joslyn Virgin Crowe — Crowe’s Eye Photography.
AV Framing Gallery, Indianapolis, IN
Opening Reception: Friday July 3, 2009 5 – 9pm
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Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
I live in the city and I love it. However, something about living this way is not quite right.
I grew up in the suburbs. The backyard of my family’s house came up to a woods where we neighborhood kids spent a lot of time getting lost. We made hideouts, buried treasure and went on long explorations. If we explored really, really far we would get to the other side of the woods and arrive at a street corner with an ice cream shop. To my 9 year old eyes, those woods were practically endless.
That was my initial taste of wildness. Those years were followed by TV, Nintendo, classrooms without windows, cars, shopping malls, air conditioning and cubicles. The wildness went from the expected to the other. You may be familiar with “the other”. It is that which is different from your daily experience. We tend to fear the other and make up excuses. Dangerous, unknown. You could get kidnapped, or eaten by a bear. The other is uncomfortable. Humidity and bugs. Excuses or not, I want it. For my sanity, I probably need it.
Henry David Thoreau wrote:
We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things by mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
“In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World”, is a photography book by Eliot Porter published in 1962. The title was taken from a passage by Thoreau. The book is a masterpiece of color nature photography. It is a statement about the lure of wild places and a celebration of the beautiful in what we mistake as common. And here we are, decades after Thoreau and Porter.
And here am I, living a life after wildness – after Porter’s book and after a time when the wild was a regular part of society. At the same time, I am after wildness – after, as in “in pursuit or quest of”. There is a struggle between my contemporary, city life and my need of the wild. This has been gnawing at me for the past few years and I suppose will be for some time. Looking at my recent photographic projects, the pursuit of the wild was there waiting for me to realize that I have been searching all along.
This need for wildness in my life is now strong enough that it requires a name. At the same time, this blog needs more focus (photography pun, hah). Blog, I christen thee, “Searching After Wildness”. May we all learn something worth living for.
Posted in Announcements, Images, Photographic process | 4 Comments »
Monday, March 30th, 2009
One on my recent projects, “Big Sky” is now on the gallery section of the website. View it here.
There are places where the trees are sparce, the cities become scattered and the sky revealed. The heavens, vaster than my imagination can hold, rests on broad shoulders of earth and stone. I am no longer at the center.
Most of these images are from the two month Camper Van Chuck road trip. There was a certain kind of pleasure in making images of broad landscapes, which I otherwise generally avoid. I avoid them because I want my images to have a bit of intimacy, a perspective that delves deeper than a flitting glimpse of a wide vista.
But, how could I ignore those luscious far reaching skies? So, I go where the spirit leads. Or the gut as it may be, although I don’t think indigestion played a part.
You can see several of these images this Friday as part of the Open Studio walks. Come by and have a chat:
April 3rd, 2009, 7 – 10pm
First Friday Open Studio
Studio #302
Murphy Art Center
1043 Virginia Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46203
Posted in Announcements, Images | No Comments »
